_Black Hawk Down_ and dirty. (1 Viewer)

[Chuck Mayer]

My problem, Luc, is the discrimination of those "awkward conversations." That was as true to life as any chat like that would be. I've been in similar situations with similar men. It rang true. They have awkward conversations. They converse like that. You can dislike it all you want...it doesn't change the authenticity.

Another war film I like, which is also respected here, gets dinged by me on that...The Thin Red Line. Every soldier in that film was a nascent poet, with deep philosophies and yearnings. Left-brain soldiers, all. I accepted that in the film, distant as it was from the truth. It served the film.

Take care,
Chuck

 

[Walter Kittel]

In Scott's defense, I believe he was attempting to structure the film in a manner that was faithful to Mark Bowden's novel. Granted, they are different formats, but the novel does a similar job in terms of character development. ( i.e. A group of loosely sketched characters presented in the context of their mission in Somalia. )
Personally, I didn't have a problem with the expository material that serves as a prelude to the mission. Even if one were to accept that criticism, it in no way dilutes the technical brilliance of what follows as Scott places the viewer squarely in the conflict. For myself, the inherent drama of the conflict supercedes considerations of character development.
While it wasn't my favorite film of the year, Black Hawk Down does hold a spot in my top ten.
- Walter.

 

[Luc D]

Chuck, I meant awkward as in poorly written, not awkward in terms of the delivery. I find the conversations completely derivative of every other war film ever made. It makes me doubt the dialogue's authenticity, and if it is (no real way of establishing that), well, sometimes authentic isn't interesting. If this is the case here then count me as uninterested.

 

[Michael Taylor]

And I think the term "war porn" is very appropriate.

What does "War Porn" mean? To describe it as "War Porn" is disturbing to me. I would call it "horrifying". At the very least, it should be called "realistic". I can see why people find it hard to watch, but I sat through most of BHD with my face perpetually in a mask of fear. Several times, I realized I had been holding my face in a constant cringe because the muscles in my face actually began to ache! "War Porn"? I saw the carnage portrayed in the film and gained a new appreciation for what soldiers in all wars have had to endure. For those who managed to survive...I have nothing but the utmost admiration for them. To face withering gunfire and not give up, not flee in fear but run back to help fallen comrades. The level of violence depicted was realistic and calling it "War Porn" trivializes the horrifying experience those men went through.

 

[Seth Paxton]

If some degree of attachment to the characters was not intended, then why present the first twenty minutes or so at all? Why bother with what little fleshing out there is in the first place?

I felt it was simply to establish who was what, how those groups interacted, what sort of soldiers we were talking about.

It gives you enough to understand the pre-game structure, if you will, so that when events start going you can keep it straight in your head.

You have to see the characters and have a little something to id them by simply so you understand the physical layout of what happened. I felt that this was the strongest aspect of the film, thus the documentary comment. I never felt totally lost in regards to characters positions during the battle, where they needed to get to, where they had been, what the limitations of the situation where, etc.

Considering the actual confusion of the situation I think Scott did an excellent job with this aspect.

 

[Rich Romero]

Well, first off to Luc, I don't think Black Hawk Down and Windtalkers deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence. They are nothing alike. Second off, Dennis, how can you possibly judge Black Hawk Down with only watching 45 minutes? How is it manipulative?

 

[Bill J]

I must confess, I couldn't finish this film on DVD; I turned it off after about 45 minutes........And I think the term "war porn" is very appropriate.

Did you start watching it in the middle?

 

[Eric Bass]

I really don't see this, as I remember this is the first women in the film that you see get shot.

My point exactly. The Rangers and Delta were mowing down men, women, and childern all night. The idea that one of the Rangers would give it half a second's thought at dawn glosses over the brutal truth about the conflict.

It seems a lot of people have problems with the fact that the movie mirrors typical Hollywood action. I think it's rather amusing that one Ranger's account of the situation has been describing himself as feeling as if he were in a movie.

Bad as it is to bring up Thin Red Line again I'm going to make a comparison. I hated Thin Red Line because the style they chose for the film is the opposite of what I want out of a war film. However I am not one to say that it's a horrible movie, just not what I want to see. So now, with BHD, I find myself on the other side of the spectrum. Now they made a movie that suits me and I'm defending it against those who don't like its style. The movie sets out simply to do the best it can to present the situation as it happened to the audience. That's all. Maybe that doesn't suit everyone. I went to Thin Red Line expecting a story about Guadalcanal and I got a three hour conceptual piece. Not my bag whatsoever, but it doesn't make the movie crap. Same applies here.

 

[Lew Crippen]

Chuck, I meant awkward as in poorly written, not awkward in terms of the delivery. I find the conversations completely derivative of every other war film ever made. It makes me doubt the dialogue's authenticity, and if it is (no real way of establishing that), well, sometimes authentic isn't interesting.

I also agree with Luc’s assessment of the writing.

Further, I find this movie quite racist. This is mostly because (as many in this thread have already observed), the movie pretends to be a documentary. Given that its presentation is documentary style, the racial makeup of “Delta” force is so far removed from the makeup of any combat unit in today’s (and yesterday’s) army that it can have no claim to resemble reality (or to be a quasi-documentary). I can only remember one Hispanic and perhaps two blacks, none of who were significant characters in the movie. This means that I find the continual conflict (of course all of the Somali’s would be black, so that is not the issue) to be black against white. Further, I suspect most strongly that this portrayal is intentional, a deliberate attempt to further push the audience’s emotional buttons.

I find the deceptions played by casting, combined with the points already made by Jack and Luc, make for a very poor movie. If this movie had intensions of making a serious statement about war, it fell well short of the mark.

It the filmmaker’s intent was pure entertainment; I was not entertained.

Many whose opinions I respect in this forum and elsewhere have differing views. Perhaps I need about the same distance as I have for Birth of a Nation in order to judge the film objectively.

 

[Robert Crawford]

You need to do a little more research about the actual event before making such a statement. The racial makeup of the soldiers involved in this firefight was exactly how it was portrayed in the film.

Futhermore, I believe the filmmaker's intent in making this film has less to do with entertainment and more to do with questioning how a country deploys it's soldiers in such a volatile foreign conflict.




Crawdaddy

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

You need to do a little more research about the actual event before making such a statement. The racial makeup of the soldiers involved in this firefight was exactly how it was portrayed in the film.

Everything I've read about the actual event was how it was exactly portrayed in the film. Believe me, if there was anything grossly inaccurate about this film, I would have been all over it.
~Edwin

 

[Robert Crawford]

I've read the book the film is based on and the company of Army Rangers involved in much of that firefight had only two blacks in their ranks of 140 men.





Crawdaddy

 

[Walter Kittel]

Re: accuracy. Having read Bowden's novel the chief differences that I detected between the film and the novel, off the top of my head, were:

1) The standard film practice of combining characters for the purposes of storytelling economy.

2) More restrained engagement of Somalian civilians by U.S. ground forces in the film vs. the novel. ( There are several descriptions of one or more Rangers at one of the four chalks firing upon massed civilians being used as a shield by militia forces. )

3) Super Six One ( the first copter ) actually crashed in a narrow street / alleyway. It did not crash in a clearing as depicted.

4) Eversmann returned to the base with the first convoy and did not return; contrasted with Josh Hartnett's character who was out all night. ( I chalk this up to item 1. )

Those observations aside, I think the film did a fine job of capturing the essence of the novel.

Robert - you are right on the money about the makeup of the Ranger and Delta forces that were involved in the conflict.

- Walter.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

It very briefly introduces each character in typical war movie fashion and gives them traits, or "quirks" so that we can identify them more easily when they're sent out to fight a sea of black, faceless enemies. I see this and the film almost immediately loses me as a viewer. You either give the soldiers a voice or you don't.

While I agree that the early scenes felt somewhat out of place in the context of the rest of the film. That said, I think it was done mainly to establish the characters so we'd be able to follow the action and battles as it develops later on. I think Ridley Scott did a good job of putting some sense to the senseless violence. When it cut to a new group, I'd remember them based on their quirks from the beginning and realize what they're doing.

 

[Seth Paxton]

The idea that one of the Rangers would give it half a second's thought at dawn glosses over the brutal truth about the conflict.

I don't think any soldiers neccessarily had come to THAT type of situation before then, or at least not that soldier.
The pause is only because the situation allowed him to grasp what was going on for a split-second, not because suddenly he flipped back to "nice guy" mode.
I would say that this moment represents to that one soldier just another step in the deteriation of the situation. One more bit of dehumanization where a victim takes on a face, and not necessarily a face of "evil". Shooting people at a distance as they are shooting at you is one thing, catching somebody not shooting at you, looking right at them, seeing them as a woman and a mother, and then still being forced to shoot them is quite another.
So I see it as part of how removed from normalacy the situation was becoming from them. It was even going outside their normal training and thought process.
The whole debate over this film reminds me of that classic Sat. Night Live sketch about the nuke reactor plant. The one senior tech gives the new techs the advice "You can never have too much water in the reactor" (something like that).
After he leaves they end up arguing over whether that meant you SHOULDN'T have too much water in there, or you should keep so much water in there that you can never have too much.
We see the exact same things but are intrepeting the intent totally differently. Guess it makes for one of the better threads we've had recently at least.

 

[Josh Lowe]

Josh,
I am not sure what the thumbs down are for? The movie, the reviews, my comments (hopefully not members)?

The thumbs down were in response to the comments of others about BHD being "push-button filmmaking", etc.

I thought BHD, while not as true to actual events as it could have been, was excellent. It has moments of Bruckheimerness, but luckily they're fewer than most films he has a hand in. Ridley Scott kept the reigns in on that stuff and brought together what I thought was a very honest portrayal. Yes, it was hard to keep track of who was who when the shooting started. Yes, there was little character development. That's because the movie is about combat, where -everything- is confusing and it's a snapshot in time across a period of less than 24 hours. Hard for characters to completely develop and change in the space of a day.

I just find the dismissive comments about the film, especially from people who admittedly didn't watch the movie past 45 minutes (in other words, before the raid even began) to be of little merit. Especially when more than a few of the most heartbreaking moments in that film are true. The first man to die, Dominic Pilla, and the effect it had on everyone who heard "He's dead" on the radio. The deaths of Shughart and Gordon who knowingly went into a hopeless situation to protect and rescue people that may very well have been dead - and the fact that the time they spent holding off the mob saved Durant's life. Those two guys practically demanded that they be allowed to give up their lives on the -chance- of saving a comrade. Stuff like that needs to be told.

I remember coming home from school one day in late 1993 and finding the new issue of Newsweek at home. It was filled with photos of angry mobs dragging dead American soldiers through the streets of Mogadishu. It took a long time for me to really understand the how and the why of it all, and I've had the privelege of discussing it with people who were indirectly involved (I've talked a lot about it with someone who lived in the hangar with the Rangers and special forces) when the firefight took place.

 

[Jeff Gatie]

First post, but longtime lurker (4 years) in the best forum on the net.

Personally, I found Blackhawk Down to be one of the most challenging movies I have seen in years simply because Scott did no handholding and required the viewer to actually live the situation rather than observe. The caveat that goes along with this is that you must be able to grasp the situation as the soldiers themselves grasped it, which is why Scott did NOT flesh out any characters nor delve too much into the socio-political reasons behind the deployment in Mog. The simple graphics at the beginning gave a minimum of information about the mission, similar to the amount of information diseminated to the soldiers who were there. "People are starving, a warlord is intercepting the food, we have to stop him, period". Nothing more was needed to enhance the story as Scott wanted to tell it. Also, the soldiers were fleshed out just enough to get to know their faces and not much else. I feel Scott did this only to introduce the characters and puposefully did not delve into any deeper character development because he did not want any emotional manipulation to color the tale. I feel this is a strength of the film, not a fault. The criticism voiced that more would be good and less would be good but the amount shown was an utter failure is weak at best and hypocritical at worst, IMHO.

That said, I also acknowledge why some may feel the lack of (or overabundance of ???) character development could be a possible stumbling point, because with no emotional attachment you must judge what the brutal scenes that follow depict in the light of the scenes themselves. This is difficult, especially given the sheer uselessness of the slaughter. Blackhawk Down forces the viewer to make their own judgements about War, without the flag-waving propaganda of your average John Wayne flick or the heavy handed anti-war message that was so obvious as to be a caricature in The Thin Red Line. Without getting into politics, I see no difference in the "Americans are for truth, justice and the American way and are tall, handsome and nice to women" message of Pearl Harbor et al, and the "Americans are a warmongering horde who do nothing but bring horror and grief to indigenous people, regardless of the evil of the enemy" message of TTRL. Both use the same BS manipulation to approach the same goal, i.e. preach a socio-political message (actually, I have no idea WHAT Pearl Harbor was preaching, except that dreck can sell tickets, but you get my drift). Any percieved manipulation in Blackhawk Down truly pales in comparision to these and millions of other films, no matter what the politics behind the message, if we truly want to make an honest comparision.

As stated before, any baggage this movie had came through the door with the viewer and with no emotional compass to tell the viewer how to feel, it is tough to judge this film. How are you supposed to feel about 1000 dead Somali's? Are you supposed to cheer the Americans who slaughtered them? Where was the tall, handsome Sgt. yelling "Follow me Boys!" and storming the beach, without one bullet hitting him, only to die saving the Kansas farmboy with the girl back home. Where was the Col. who ordered the troops into certain suicide because he was a sadist who sent men to do what he himself could not? Where were the P-51's, flying in at the last second to save the day, but not the hero? Where was the beautiful countryside, smashed and demolished by the machines and hatred of Man?

Answer? They did not exist, and Scott took no literary license to invent them. Why? Cause it was a true story, it really happened. It happened in a hellhole of a country where life was not worth more than a bucket of warm spit. Where starvation was a weapon and our boys had to become butchers because they were blessed to grow up in a country where the life of the man next to you means something. If the contrast of Somali's dying by the thousands in order to kill 19 GI's and those GI's risking and sacrificing their own lives to rescue or retrieve just one of their own is not enough to discern the "point" of this film, then I guess Scott (and Bowden) failed in their tale.

Pro-American and flag-waving? In a sense, yes: If you call valuing life flag-waving, color Blackhawk Down guilty. The mention of Clinton's pullout at the end could be considered right-wing propaganda, if you did not know that the most bewildering question of every man Bowden interviewed was "Why couldn't we go back and finish what we started, for our fallen, for ourselves?" To this day those men live with the guilt that they did not go back and finish the job. Personally, I think guilt was a strong theme to be taken from this film, but not due to any flag-waving or propaganda. I said above for the film to work, the viewer must grasp what the soldiers were feeling. Having never been in combat, this was ultimately difficult, maybe impossible for me.

Yes, a difficult film all around and due to it's closeness in history and the depiction of actual bravery and fear and heroism and brutality on the screen, guilt is definately something I got from this film. Of course, the guilt was my own . . .

 

[Kevin Leonard]

Slightly off-topic here, but I'll ask anyways: does anybody have any links that provide fairly in-depth info on the Delta Force (how they operate, requirements, training, what determines their participation, etc.)? It's been a challenge to find much info considering how secretive they are.

As for the movie, I'll just say this: I can easily admire and appreciate it, but I can't love it, despite two viewings.

(I also reread Mark Bowden's book recently, and I strongly urge anyone who has even a passing interest in the movie to read it. It's a wonderful piece of work in any respect.)

 

[Dave Barth]

Anyone who is interested in these events and wants a narrative account with more character development and some consideration of the Somali perspective should read the book.

I think the movie stands on its own as an excellent portrayal of the events, relying on a very different set of narrative techniques.

Most of my complaints about the film have to do with its factual inaccuracies, which are largely of second-order importance.

I do have to say I don't understand the complain that the film is "war porn". If anyone was (gratuitously) excited by the combat sequences (= 95% of the movie), I think that says more about them than anything about the film itself. Was any reader here excited by the battles instead of horrified by the carnage?

 

[Andy Olivera]

Was any reader here excited by the battles instead of horrified by the carnage?

What exactly is wrong with finding combat exciting? I've yet to see BHD(waiting for the upcoming SE), but I'm looking forward to it with great anticipation. Assuming the battle sequences are as realistic as SPR, I can't understand how it wouldn't be exciting.

The people, such as myself, who enjoy the depiction of battle on film have never been in actual combat. Most will never get the opportunity. Film is as close as I, and others, will ever get to the battlefield. My view might change if I were to experience combat, but that probably won't happen.

I look at battle as something a person should be proud to have experienced, and every time I watch a film like SPR, I come away with a greater respect for those people. And every time I wish I could count myself among them.

Honestly, what could be more exciting than fighting and dying to save a friend, or for a good cause? Only when somebody can give me a satisfactory answer to that question will I consider the term "war porn" appropriate. IMO, that term is used by those who don't know how, or have the ability, to handle what they're seeing...