Technically well-made but strangely lifeless.

Rating: 5/10 (18 January 2002)

Black Hawk Down is a technically well-made film that left me feeling strangely unsatisfied and empty. For all of the hype that I heard concerning the movie's battle scenes, I found them to be incoherent and for the most part, overrated. Some have said that this film deserves comparison to Apocalypse Now or Saving Private Ryan. I feel that Apocalypse Now is in a far better category, and even though I had some problems with Saving Private Ryan, it still packed more of a wallop.
The problem with Black Hawk Down is that it seems to be a cinematic void. It doesn't really have much of a direction, other than almost two hours of gunfire spraying the streets of Somalia. As an accurate representation of what happened in Somalia, I am sure it is superb. However, I go to the movies to become involved in a story, although not necessarily through identification with the characters (Apocalypse Now and The Thin Red Line are good examples of war movies without lovable characters that involved me). However, Black Hawk Down was void of any real connection for me, so that by the end, I was just staring at the screen.
Part of this is due to the way that Scott chooses to present the horrors that happened on October 3, 1993. By consistently barraging us with gunfire and RPGs exploding, we are actually desensitized. There is none of the surprise or suspense of Saving Private Ryan. I understand that this is a film based on a true story, and not an action film designed to deliver cheap thrills, but it comes across more as a nonstop shooting gallery. Some of the best moments in the film are the quiet ones: the helicopters flying over the beaches before what is supposed to be a routine mission, the eerie sight of an empty city in prayer for only a few fleeting minutes, and the silent running of the American soldiers back to their base. But these moments are few and far between, and they only offer glimpses of the truly chilling war picture this might have been.
Some have complained that this film is racist because it does not present the views of the Somalians or explain why some of the civilians acted the way they did. This is a legitimate complaint, but it did not bother me, because the movie makes it clear early on that it is about the soldiers and what they went through. I was really looking forward to a film which actually contemplated what it was like to be a soldier, not knowing what to do next or whether you had been abandoned. Unfortunately, the film, while offering glimmers of my hope, also provided ample war movie cliches. By the third time a dying soldier said "Tell so-and-so so-and-so", I almost rolled my eyes.
In a film with hundreds of different actors, only two really left me with any memory whatsoever. Josh Hartnett (who I'm usually not a big fan of) was excellent in his role as the meditative sergeant who is actually afraid to be where he is. The other actor is the always reliable character actor Tom Sizemore, who creates a strong character out of only a few lines. Unfortunately, other strong talents like Ewan MacGregor are largely wasted. I understand that this is not by nature an actor's movie, and I wasn't hoping for cliche caricatures, just some human connection to make me care when the bullets started hitting the soldiers.
To the film's credit, it does delve into some of the fears felt by the soldiers in a situation like this. The film gets better as it goes along, as nighttime falls, we feel an eeriness. Scott does an excellent job of actually taking us to this city with all of its chaos and fear. But as with most of Scott's films, the technical brilliance is overshadowed by a curious lack of any connection to anything. Even the impressive camerawork left me with only fleeting memories of memorable shots. And I still can't think of one scene that I could call great in the movie (by contrast, Apocalypse Now is virtually one stringed after another). Black Hawk Down, for all of its technical superiority, could have been so much more with just a shred of spine. Instead, we have a film that is better than most of what Hollywood offers, but still very disappointing.
Rating: 58/100.