Single-Note Movie - Scott's Poorest

Rating: Null/10 (22 December 2001)

BLACK HAWK DOWN is, as you would expect from Ridley Scott, a technically impeccable picture.
BLACK HAWK DOWN is also the most monotonous, uninvolving, all-been-done-before, who-cares-if-the-good-guys-die movie Ridley Scott has ever directed.
After 2 and 1/2 hours of relentless, repetitive action a-la SAVING PRIVATE RYAN that includes the same kind of jittery cinematography and frantic pacing as the action pieces in that other film, you realize why that worked and this doesn't. The "slow" parts of SPR told you stories that made you care. BHD gives you no such background to the characters or the action. Many of the actors look alike and are often photographed to look alike, so that after a while you don't know who's alive, who died, and you don't really care.
Scott pummels you in sequence after sequence with the shots of "the enemy" attacking, killing, dying. The camera treats the enemy as an amorphous mob that, like vermin, keeps on coming.
And on and on it goes.
Skip this one.