An extended Army commercial

Rating: 4/10 (27 December 2016)

At the very end of the film, Eric Bana's character 'Hoot' munches through a chewing gum and gives a soliloquy where he explains why soldiers do what they do. "We're not some war junkies, (munch, munch) no. We do it for (munch, munch) the man next to us. That's (munch, munch), that's all there is." Bana's emphatic munching while delivering the speech is an odd acting choice. I'm still at odds whether this was supposed to be a misguided portrayal of realistic parlance, or was he just satirizing the text. Which is what he should really do. Because that explanation doesn't parlay well into young civilian's motivation for choosing a military career. "Hey, I'm signing up because I want to be there for a fellow man!" can just as well be applied to deciding to join a football team, or a cult, or a stamp collector group. In any case it's an inappropriate conclusion to a film that is little more than a masturbatory love letter to the Long Arm of the US foreign policy.
Because the first and foremost goal of "Black Hawk Down" is to make the US Army look *cool*. From the slick shots of the "Hueys" flying into action over an exotic backdrop, over the soldiers spewing witty one-liners amidst gunfire and explosions, to a slow motion shot of a couple of them treading the streets of Mogadishu in the style of Magnificent Seven, the message is clear: "US Army is where it's at. It may lose a battle or two, but it's righteous and glorious." Ridley Scott, an Englishman, went out of his way to outdo his brother Tony's USAF commercial that is "Top Gun". He lent his mastery in visuals and direction to deliver a propaganda piece timed and engineered for the US invasion of Afghanistan.
Camera-work, scenery and action set pieces are great, occasionally truly gripping. Everything else in this film ranges from cynical to dishonest: on the nose moralizing, whitewashing the cast, portraying the enemy as a faceless horde, distorting the historical evidence... to name a few things. Glossed over are the murky reasons US Army was sent to Somalia in the first place. The Somalis' motives for the fight are mentioned as an afterthought, just to give an appearance of a balanced point of view. The involvement of other countries in that "peacekeeping" mission is neglected. It doesn't matter, it's not a historical film anyway.
It's not an anti-war film either. To some viewers, portraying the battle that has gone wrong and was essentially a failure is a tantamount to a call against armed violence. Not in my opinion. I think glorifying a tragically botched military operation yields a far stronger reaction than filming the one that was successful and completed. It makes a young viewer want to join and finish the job. What difference does it make whether it's Mogadishu or Kabul? They all look the same, don't they?
And no, Mr. 'Hoot', you're not in it for the guy next to you, you're just a war junkie. Otherwise you and that other guy would have just stayed at home.