Sweeping, gutsy, eloquent, astonishing, moving...yeah

Rating: 9/10 (26 July 2010)

Black Hawk Down (2001)
As much as this is a nerve-wracking, non-stop, high intensity war film that leaves you exhausted, you know that this is barely a whisper of a hint of the skim of the real thing, being there, being shot at and shooting, facing death on both sides.
But what this means more than anything is the movie comes as close as a normal movie can to the intensity of being there. Black Hawk Down is a director's nightmare, and Ridley Scott pulls it off, minute after minute, with lucidity. When the layering of images, the pace, and and the kinetic motion of the camera seem overwhelming, Scott (and his crew, notably Polish cinematographer Slawomir Idziak and Italian editor Pietro Scalia) make this completely absorbing and sensible. The cutting and the multitude of images interwoven for scene after scene would overwhelm most people, but there is becomes poetic and logical without ever becoming easy.
The acting? It sometimes seems to tip toward a hyped up, grand version of archetypes that we know and sometimes expect in war movies, but each of the many main men are intensely believable and realized. The music, too, might threaten to be manipulative, but it never draws attention to itself. And so on. Meaning only that this is a Hollywood movie, for sure, but a really really good one. It plays up the cinematic drama that makes movies movies (and not documentaries) but it is so thoughtfully and artistically considered, it rises above.
Is it a masterpiece? Well, it lacks what you might call utter originality or invention, or even insight. When you finish, you sigh with relief that you've survived, but there is no inner searching left to do. This is partly because this is the truth of war, based on real events. And it's intention is to submerse you in that world, and hold your head under until you are screaming for air.