And the point of this movie's existence is what, again?

Rating: Null/10 (24 January 2002)

This movie left me pretty uneasy. It is, of course, a "horrors of war" movie, with really strong direction and photography of the action sequences, which are, truly, most of the film. And, I'll admit, right off the bat, that was a neat thing to see on the screen. Look at that! Look at that! Fine.
But while I'm watching this and thinking "look at that!" I'm also thinking, "but, wait, why is watching people get blown up a good thing for me to be doing?" Or, more specifically, when I was presented with a surgery-channel-style extreme-close-up deep into a gruesome, gaping wound, I had to wonder, "What am I supposed to be getting out of all this?"
And I just don't have any answers to that question that make me feel comfortable with this movie - there's just something irresponsible, for want of a better word, of making a gory action movie out of recent, still relevant events; of turning a real soldier who died less than ten years ago into "the guy who got blown in half!" Yea, even in the name of glorifying U.S. military heroism.
You say the point of the movie is to sober us up, to expose us to this event as it REALLY HAPPENED? Maybe there's something defensible there, in principle - but to actually pull that off, you've got to live up to a lot more responsibilities - you can't load the first half hour with cliched war-movie dialogue and cheap characterization, because then we're not in the world of "history" at all - we're in the world of action movies, where the explosions aren't just intense, they're really cool - and my stomach turned a bit every time it occurred to me that somewhere in the theater, surely, were people who were thinking, "duuude." The guy in front of me actually clapped in admiration at the goriest surprises. Really.
And please - you don't put Hans Zimmer's driving beat over sober history. You put it over a cool flick.
Not to mention the comic relief guys.
Plus, if this is indeed somehow supposed to be (as the 'somber' captions at the beginning and end suggest) a bit of historical perspective, it really IS obliged to be more intelligent about the politics involved. And don't tell me that it's an apolitical movie because the soldiers are just soldiers following orders - it's an apolitical movie because the filmmakers chose what to put in the movie and what not to. And so again I say: please tell me it was for some good reason and not to make a cooler movie.
I know, it was about HEROISM - but if that's all they cared about then why couldn't they make up their own story about heroism instead of making that the 'spin' on a disturbing episode of recent history? We were well beyond the "inspired by real events" realm here - this was supposed to BE real events. That's a lot to bite off, sure, but the moviemakers are the ones who bit it off, and so they've got to deal with it on those terms.
At least "Saving Private Ryan," another war movie with impressively realistic action scenes but corny writing, was off this particular hook somewhat, because the tradition of making cinematic nonsense out of World War II was well established, so any touches of grim reality in that movie were genuinely sobering and valuable. "Black Hawk Down," on the other hand, is looking back less than a decade to events which have not yet been trodden on by the Jerry Bruckheimers of the world, and in my opinion this means he is accountable for any dirt he gets on its pristine historicity, so to speak. Should he be congratulated for only getting SOME dirt on it when he would usually bury it in manure? Isn't this still a misguided endeavor?