Sweeping but small in scope at the same time

Rating: 7/10 (1 May 2017)

I have one problem with "Black Hawk Down", and that is that it spreads itself a bit too thin. There are a LOT of characters in this movie, and while some of them do get fairly deep motivations and backstories, by the end of the film, I still had difficulty telling them apart. So if this review is light on specific character names, I want you to know why. Part of the difficulty of making a movie about a real-life story is figuring out just how accurate you can make it without losing the audience. For the most part, this film succeeds.
Ridley Scott is a brilliant technical director and visual stylist. He knows how to stage action that is thrilling without being glamorous (can you imagine what Michael Bay would have done to this material?), and the editing and sound on this film are absolutely spectacular. The film deals with a failed U.S. military raid on a Somalian warlord who was preventing U.N. food shipments from reaching the poor and the needy. The time frame of the film is only a few days (I think), and that lends the whole movie a you-are-there quality that is essential to this kind of storytelling.
There are a lot of recognizable faces in this film, but this is not a star-driven movie. Josh Hartnett gives just what is probably his best performance ever as an idealistic young squad leader. Ewan McGregor plays a glorified secretary who gets promoted to a proper foot soldier when the crap hits the fan. Tom Sizemore plays a no-nonsense commander who gradually watches the whole mission fail from a distance. Eric Bana shines as a seasoned soldier who, to some, seems to take almost too much pleasure in his work. Rounding out the cast are plenty of other talented people: Tom Hardy, Jason Isaacs, Ewen Bremner, Sam Shepard, William Fichtner, and more.
This is a film that shines in its little moments. One soldier fires his gun too close to another's head, deafening him. Another steals through an occupied house where a mother sits huddled with her children to get away from the fighting on the street. A donkey wanders through dangerous territory, still hitched to a wagon. This is not the deepest war movie I've ever seen, but it makes its points with a relative minimum of speechifying and jingoism. (There are a few of those moments later on, but they feel mostly earned.) It stands up to repeat viewings, too, which is kind of rare for a movie based on real events.
There are moments where I wish this film had dug a little deeper under its characters' skin, but then again, it might have sacrificed tension in doing so. And if there's one thing that this movie is, it's gripping. I was not in the least surprised to hear "The Minstrel Boy" over the end credits. That song sums up the movie fairly well.