Yet another Jerry Bruckheimer mistake

Rating: Null/10 (24 February 2002)

Let me start off by saying that Jerry Bruckheimer has never made a good movie. Everything he does drips with feel-good summer blockbuster emotions which lack any kind of depth or genuine emotion. Enter Black Hawk Down. When I went into the theater I didn't know that Bruckheimer was involved in the film. I knew Ridley Scott directed it, but I had no idea that Bruckheimer put his tainted hands on the script.
Black Hawk down is basically a remake of Armageddon, only set in Somalia. The movie is 2 1/2 hours long. With all that time, we still know nothing about the characters. I would have felt more emotion for the dying soldiers if I knew who they were. Every time some young American soldier was gunned down, I was too busy wondering who it was to watch the movie. Rather than take some time to establish the characters, we spend the entire movie watching battle after battle.
This movie is one long continuous boring stretched-out nauseating action scene. There are no dynamics. It's 150 minutes of gun fire. I love a good war movie. What I don't like is a gun fight which takes up an entire Friday night. Bruckheimer is to blame. Ridley Scott has done some great stuff. Bruckheimer has yet to prove himself. He can't work on film with less than a $100 million dollar budget. That should tell you something about his skill as a director/producer.