Black Hawk Down

He was so sexy and good in this movie. Anyway, the cast was impressive and brilliant, Ridley Scott gave great care in every little details and it seems incredibly realistic. I usually don't like war movies but this was very good

All good films have someone shooting a machine gun from a helicopter. This one does. Ideally they also have some music that sounds like the breakdown in Prodigy's smack my b*tch up. This one does. Eric Bana saying his trigger finger is his safety catch is a bonus. Check in your morals at the front door and enjoy the ride. Probably the seventh best film ever made.

Starts out as a very solid war film; nice and technical with plenty of well-directed shootouts. Scott is as thorough as ever in his attention to detail and it promises to be a very good watch. Unfortunately it all goes downhill very quickly. The focus shifts away from showing the brutal reality of a historical conflict and onto the heroism of the American armed forces against the untrained and poorly equipped masses of a third-world country. There's little sympathy shown for the hundreds of Somalis who die at the hands of both sides, and in fact the dialogue of the protagonists and the distinctly pro-American viewpoint of the film have a profound dehunmanising effect on the real victims of the conflict. Although if I'm honest there wasn't much characterisation of the heroes either. Towards the end I got the distinct feeling that the producers stepped in and reminded Ridley who the target audience was because the amount of slow-mo shots and heroic music turned the film into something more like an old western. There's a pretty stellar cast and if you can stomach the glorification of a historical tragedy then you'll almost certainly enjoy the action scenes, but with such a talented director, respected actors and a truly dramatic episode from history as a starting point, I can't help but feel let down.

Mixed feelings, I expected much more after avoiding this film for years and years. In the end, I was missing nothing.

If you liked old 'cowboys-killing-Indians' movies, this is for you.

The fact that not a single Black actor or extra in the film

looked remotely Somali was a let-down from the start

that completely destroyed my suspension of disbelief. Add to that the one cliche after the other and the shallow characterisation of the red-neck all-American boys, made it your typical animation-splatter predictable War-fest with no historical context, no depth and little realism. Ridley has a great skill of image and direction though, so it was watchable.

What an extraordinary production BHD is, the attention to detail is everything that you would expect from a Ridley Scott film, and is astounding. It’s an extensive and interesting cast too, with Sterling work from Eric Bana, William Fitchner and Josh Hartnett; although arguably it is Jason Isaacs (Hello Jason) who has the most to work with in terms of his character. Clearly the ground work for BHD was laid by the likes of ‘Saving Private Ryan’ and ‘The Thin Red Line’, each released three years earlier, and BHD is more of a frenetic onslaught of near-constant combat than either of those game changing war films. It is also the most jingoistic of the three, managing to paint the ill-fated raid in the colours of victory despite the fact that it appears (I admit I’m no expert) to have been misguided and ultimately fruitless, and required the UN to bail the US troops out. In my opinion BHD is every bit as one dimensional as ‘The Hurt Locker’. BHD lacks the questioning stance of films like ‘Syriana’ and ‘Body of Lies’, although it is a different animal, and being a historical piece BHD perhaps has to be forgiven for that lack. For all its failings BHD remains highly watchable if you are not put off by the constant tinkle of shell cases.