Review of Black Hawk Down (2001) by Manuel A — 24 Jan 2011

Documentaries can sometimes make great cinema, but it really hinges on there being enough story and character to spin into two hours of film. Black Hawk Down almost pulls it off; the story is certainly epic, with serious implications to the world we live in now, but it's hard to ignore the lack of compelling or sympathetic characters, no matter how realistic that may be.

Basically the movie is the story of a special ops mission gone horribly wrong, almost from the first momentthe movie is really just one long firefight. Although there's some attempt to give some colour to the characters before the inevitable action, there are really too many of them, and they're too similar, for us to be really drawn to any, with the possible exception of the well-performed Lt. Col. McKnight. The viewer is really more puzzled than anything by the events that took place - why do the Americans get shot so easily? why didn't they have any backup or real contingency plan for when things went wrong? can the traffic spotters/observers really have been so grossly incompetent? And it's hard to develop affection for characters when you're pretty sure they're going to die shortly or be ordered to do something stupid.

Although it's a a clear inspiration for modern FPS games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (right down to the soundtrack), and while it's technically exceptionally well done (down to the early 90's tunes the Americans listen to and the atmospheric Somali music), in the end the movie is really just more depressing than anything else: a movie that prompts a lot of questions but doesn't really give any answers, and leaves you wondering what the point was. But then, maybe that's the point after all.