Sincere war film

Rating: Null/10 (2 March 2005)

Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down is a gruesome and gritty yet sincere and a "no-bs" depiction of the events that took place in Somalia in 1993. When American Rangers and Delta Force, 123 men in total, were sent into the Somali capital of Mogadishu to take two of warlord Mohammed F. Aidid's top lieutenants as prisoners. The mission was expected to take no longer than half an hour; American intelligence was once again very wrong. Things began to go terribly wrong when the first Black Hawk helicopter was shot down by Somali militia. Like General Garrison, very well played by Sam Shepard, said they "lost the incentive". Men began to get killed, everything that happened was the opposite of what was planned. They didn't expect that much opposition from the Somalis. The Humvee convoy had no route to take to take out the wounded and to take the prisoners in. All the men were trapped in a kill-box. The expected half an hour turned into a whole day. The men had to spend the night in the deadly streets of Mogadishu. The cinematography in the film gives the audience a true sense of what war looks like. Ridley Scott directed the actors of the movie realistically and created a very accurate portrayal of the hell that war turns into. Scott creates a world were everyone is in the same mess, no matter what rank the soldier is. Scott shows this when General Garrison wipes the blood on the floor in the operating room in the end of the movie. Another thing the director does to create a sense of uniformity in the soldiers is that he doesn't show much character of any the soldiers. Everyone seems the same, with the exception of Sgt. Eversmann, Sgt. Hoot and and Colonel McKnight. Everyone was scared, everyone was in the same place, every soldier was on the verge of death. Deltas and Rangers, who before the fight were always competing in one way or another, fought side-by-side in order to survive those deadly 24 hours on hostile ground. This is a great film, good enough to be compared to Saving Private Ryan or Apocalypse Now. It is very realistic picture of what war really is.