This could be the most unpleasant film I've ever seen.

Rating: Null/10 (30 July 2010)

What an awful experience. Do you remember all the buzz about the D-day scene from Saving Private Ryan? Imagine a whole movie that's just that. Black Hawk Down is that movie.
Giving a synopsis is very difficult simply because the film does a horrible job of explaining what's going on. Basically the Somalians are bad and the Americans go in and fight. We follow a bunch of random soldiers as they fight their way through.
The problem is that we don't ever get to know anything about them. They are just names and faces. One minute after the credits rolled, I could not remember the name of a single person in the entire thing. Not a single name! That is how unimportant these characters are.
It is impossible to care about what's going on if the reasons behind the chaos are vague at best, and the movie gives us no reason to care about its protagonists. Because of this, all I saw were random explosions and people getting maimed. Unfortunately that isn't even done right since I could never tell where anyone was in relation to anyone else or where/when these goings on were... well... going on.
I suppose that it could be argued that it was done this way to simulate the real confusion and chaos of the battle field, but I disagree. Real conflicts are complex things. They are not just random acts of violence. They involve real people; people with a past and family and friends. They involve complex political and social issues and conflicts. Ridley Scott's vision of war, on the other hand, has none of this so it cannot be simulating any kind of reality. Ridley Scott's vision of war is that of a hyper-active fourteen-year-old who just watched Saving Private Ryan and thought that the D-day scene was "cool" but that pesky story was boring and disposable.
1/2 out of 5 stars