Modern warfare in an eye-candy way.

Rating: 9/10 (8 March 2006)

Black Hawk Dawn is a movie based on Mark Bowdens book "Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War". The movie is based on the true events that took place on the 3rd of October in 1993 in the city of Mogadishu, Somalia. On that day nearly 100 U.S. Army Rangers and Delta operatives were dropped via helicopter deep into the capital city of Mogadishu to capture two top lieutenants of a Somali warlord Farrah Aidid which lead to a large and drawn-out firefight between the US soldiers and hundreds of Somali gunmen. The battle led to the destruction of two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters and to the death of 18 US soldiers and an estimated 1000 Somali guerrillas, men, women and children.
Director of the film, Ridley Scott, has scored big time and created one of the most memorable war movies with Black Hawk Down. Unlike some war films that add slow character-building sequences, you have to wait only about thirty minutes for the mission to go into effect. And the action doesn't stop for the next two hours, as the rest of the movie is filled with flying bullets, yells and explosions. It's intensive in a way very much like the first 20 minutes of Spielbergs "Saving Private Ryan". At times the fighting is so chaotic that it is hard to follow the action and tell what is happening and it becomes almost too easy to become accustomed to the violence. There are a few errors along the the way such as few obvious mistakes and stupid scenes (such as a Delta throwing a grenade for 400 feet) that catch the eye in a negative way and kill the immersion for a bit.
Overall I would recommend this movie to any war-film fan, as well as to anyone that likes watching visual movies in general. This movie will deliver fantastic eye-candy and extremely intensive and yet rather realistic action to everyone interested.