Rating:
Year: 2001
Director: Ridley Scott
bang bang bang
“Shoot them skinnies!”
bang bang bang
“Ohmigod…”
“Chill dude, this is war, people die.”
“Oh, I see.”
THE ENDThere, I just saved you ten bucks, and this is one less ticket of encouragement for humourless, pretentious old Ridley Scott. Okay, I’m pushing it, but “Black Hawk Down” has it coming. After an engrossing start, it becomes not only more and more tiresome and inconsequential but you start to realise how sickeningly shallow and offensive it is. Oh, sure, it looks pretty, with Scott getting off on faded blue skies, sandy atmosphere, blacker than black big bad Africans, things blowing up real good, helicopters flying around, excessive gore and, er, empty bullet shells. Maybe he’s aware that this is just what his movie is, one big shiny but empty bullet shell.The movie takes place on October 3, 1993 (and early on the 4th), in the city of Mogadishu in Somalia during the civil war which torn the country apart, with hundreds of thousand people dying of hunger because of the guerrilla warlords’ bloody quarrelling. American troops, through the United Nations, are there to try and make things better, but on that one fateful day, all they’ll do is turn this city into hell on earth, with 19 American soldiers killed in action and dozens others injured –oh, and over a thousand Somalians died too, but they’re just skinnies, so who cares, right? Well, I do care, but the film doesn’t seem to. We barely learn anything about the how and why of the conflict in Somalia and the U.S.’s involvement. Little blocks of exposition text bookend the film, but in between no effort is made to put the explosive mayhem that makes up the bulk of it into context. Journalists have asked Scott why he avoids any statement or insight into these real life events, and he responded by quoting Eric Bana’s character: “Once that first bullet whizzes by, all the politics don’t mean shit.”.
Bullshit, I say. Maybe this is true for the men in battle, but Scott as a filmmaker is expected to offer some perspective. Francis Ford Coppola made war surreal in “Apocalypse Now”, Terrence Malick made it introspective in “The Thin Red Line”, Stanley Kubrick made it cold and clinical in “Full Metal Jacket”, Steven Spielberg made it sentimental in “Saving Private Ryan”… Scott? All he’s made is a big noisy video game in which countless African man-animals (that’s how he depicts them) pop out everywhere around a bunch of strong-proud-be-all-you-can-be American boys to be shot dead one after another, taking out one of the good guys once in a while for good measure. I guess Scott is trying to move us when of the soldiers dies, but as none of them are developed in the least, we don’t feel anything one way or another.
I mean, who are these characters, besides more or less well known character actors in military gear ? William Fichtner gives odd looks, Tom Sizemore yells a lot, Ewan McGregor can’t really hold on to his American accent but can make good coffee, his “Trainspotting” mate Ewen Bremner offers some inappropriate comic relief, Josh Hartnett looks solid yet insecure… And that’s the most developed parts! “Black Hawk Down” is a technically impressive but intellectually and emotionally empty picture. Its warfare antics are exciting on a sensory level for a while, but they grow mighty boring and frustrating when you realise that it’s just gonna be more of the same for two hours: American soldiers being macho and eeeeeevil Africans being mowed down by gunfire. Not cool.