Remarkably accurate and remarkably hollow.

Rating: 6/10 (1 March 2002)

Black Hawk Down avoids dealing with the political side of the story and basically restricts itself to combat situations between American soldiers and Somalian rebels. It must be said that most of these scenes are brilliantly executed, wonderfully shot with pale filters and edited with a very hectic and effective pace. But BHD suffers from an overkill of technically superior firefights, that eventually deadens the senses just as the action sequences in Pearl Harbor tended to make viewers numb after prolonged bombardments and such. Scott undoubtedly succeeds in depicting a realistic and impressive report of what happened in Mogadishu, but he also ignores content in favour of style and thereby fails to make any statement about the events whatsoever (apart from stating that these soldiers were tremendously brave maybe which is of course a statement that will not raise any eyebrows); our heroes remain anonymous to us, also there isn't any character development to speak of. At one point i expected the film to focus on the executive mismanagement that may have played an important role in this military tragedy, but unfortunately Scott never really adresses this aspect of the events (and i have a feeling the military gratiously providing the actual Blackhawk craft for the shooting had something to do with this). Also I found it surprising to see BHD was practically devoid of patriotic sentiment (in the sense of American flags in the wind, accompanied by trumpets and horns) unlike almost all of Bruckheimer's other productions. What we're left with in the end is a remarkably accurate but also remarkably hollow war-film, not a waste of time, but certainly not worth the hype it has caused.