this is what war is like

Rating: 10/10 (30 April 2005)

Black Hawk Down really surprised me. No, it shocked me. I expected the usual patriotic we're-heroes-and-we-love-it stuff, but I was wrong. BHD tells the story from the soldiers point of view, how they suffer, how they are overrun and how they die. We get to see everything, whether it's Jamie bleeding to death, a dying Ruiz telling Captain Steele not go out without him or the horror in Eversman's eyes when he sees the Black Hawk going down. Through all the bullets and blood the film is asking: well what did you expect? This is what war is like. And in combat not everything goes the way it's supposed to go (they actually can't find the right way). Other movies give the impression that soldiers are no human being, like they don't have feeling, they are never scared and so on. But the nervousness shortly before the mission starts corrects that. The scene in which Blackburn falls out of the helicopter is a good example that even the excellent training can't prevent mistakes from happening. No supermen in the army, "just" normal people.
The film is not into politics and this is what makes it so incredibly good. Like Hoot says "once the first bullet goes past your head, the politics go right out of the window". And once the first bullet goes past our head (you really get the feeling you're standing in Mog) we stop thinking about whether it was wrong or right or too late to send troops to Somalia. During the film this is only background information, but as soon as it is over, the knowledge of the fact that this really happened and that even the names of the characters are authentic comes back with all force.
You want to see a good, believable war movie? Watch this.