I am so sad I wasted my time

Rating: 1/10 (12 August 2002)

Blackhawk down is perhaps the worst war drama ever created, and this comes from a fan of the genre. I found it too claustrophobic, inane, and very BORING. If this, Scott's worst (by far) effort had not been based on actual events I would maintain that it was made up by an incompetent army newsletter writer. There are no characters that seem in any way believable nor do you have any level of empathy with a single person (and these are American soldiers). Mr. Scott should despite many glowing reviews be made to sit in a corner and really think about what a pitiful movie he threw together. Of all the films I have seen in the past five or so years this has the least (if any) redeeming qualities, it is that bad. I will not take the actors to task they had nothing whatsoever to work with, so we have no idea what the performances would be. So I will stick to the real problems story, direction, and editing. First, I love America and I respect and admire our men and women who serve. That said every conflict we take part in does not need to be captured on film. Blackhawk Down had no more business being made than Heartbreak Ridge, and the Eastwood flop is sadly quite a bit better in everyway except special effects. As far as direction I am shocked that Ridley Scott would put his name on this fiasco. He fails to get a single memorable performance or to provide any feel other than being in a coffin with explosions in the background. The guys(including the talented Scott)in the film cutting room also come up short but maybe they just threw in the best of a bad lot and hope that patriotism would cover the almost endless flaws. On a positive not the film is not extremely long and there are some pretty good effects, but too few for this to deserve much merit for them.
1/5 .5 for being a great Army commercial(though I prefer the 30sec variety) and .5 was for a token few special effects scenes that were effective. A failure on every plausible plane.