More Bruckheimer Junk

Rating: 1/10 (20 January 2002)

Two words tell you everything you need to know about this film: Jerry Bruckheimer.
Remember, he's the man responsible for inflicting the painful Pearl Harbor on us. His involvement in Black Hawk Down more than cancels out anything director Ridley Scott might have been able to make out of it.
Black Hawk Down is the story of the disastrous US raid-gone-wrong in Mogadishu, Somalia, in the early 1990's. The story itself is extraordinary, and the book by Mark Bowden is much more exciting than the film, which ought to tell you something.
As for the actors - who cares? With so many actors, an incredibly small amount of time is spent in what should have been crucial set-up, so we neither know nor care about the characters, and most of them are reduced to fake two-dimensional stereotype caricatures (a Bruckheimer hallmark).
Horrible, trite dialog which you see coming a mile away and is just embarrassing to hear come out of anyone's mouth (another Bruckheimer hallmark).
One of the soldiers calls his wife just before mounting up for the mission, and leaves her a sappy message on the answering machine, and she walks in and picks up the phone just as the soldier hangs up, missing his call. Any guesses on what's gonna happen to THAT guy (another Bruckheimer Hallmark)? Put a classic Star Trek red shirt on him, for god's sake.
Much of the combat scenes are very well done, but the movie is plagued with horrible editing, both visual and sound. Many times a character speaks words with his mouth way out of sync with what we hear.
Music score by Hans Zimmer's California corporate music factory excellent. Superb version of classic English hymn "The Minstrel Boy" over closing credits.
Crowd scenes very well done, something which modern movies regularly screw up. The extras portraying the Somali savages really did a great job, were very well-drilled and choreographed, and looked very believable.
And for the usual nit-picking criticism - major continuity errors throughout the film. My favorite: A column of US Hummvees is driving through the streets of Mogadishu, and we get a great shot from the top of one of them, clearly showing the Hummers mounted with M60 machine guns atop each. Cut away to side shot, and all the Hummers are mounted with M2 heavy-barrel machineguns. A small thing, but when you spend that much to make a movie, and it is one which is going to be viewed and analyzed by military hardware fanatics, one which you'd better freakin' well get right - especially if you're charging us $8 to see it. For those of us who AREN'T military hardware fans, an M60 is a Viet Nam era weapon which almost everyone would recognize... and an M2 heavy barrel machinegun is a WWI era weapon still in use. The two are totally different and look nothing alike.
In all it's generous to score Black Hawk Down a 4 of 10. I would say wait for it on video if you're going to see it at all, but then the film's only powerful impact - the battle scenes - would be greatly diminished. So maybe a dollar movie?