aria
Former Moderator
- Joined
- Dec 4, 1977
- Posts
- 39,546
Don't you just love Oscar qualifying time?
This movie is 2 1/2 hours, with 2 of those being people shooting each other.
It's based off of the book about that incredibly bad FUBAR in Somalia back in 1993 (You know, the one where CNN showed Somali mobs dragging around dead servicemen, which in turn led to the US withdrawl).
I'd already seen a number of good documentaries on cable about that battle, its mistakes, and its heroes -so I went into this movie with a bit of a critical eye. And from what I saw I was impressed.
As I mentioned at the beginning, most of this movie is all action. They give the soldier a few decent personalities for story's sake, but no cliche sub-plots (thank god. The battle is the story. The main reviewers are a bit mixed into liked/loved-it groups. Mostly debating over the moral of the movie, or the need for one. Black Hawk down really doesn't try and answer the question of "why?" but gives you a lot of facts and truths to form your own judgements.
While it'd probably make a person think twice before signing up for the armed forces, it doesn't portray the military (in this case Rangers and Delta Force) as the bad guy (or even the Somalies as the bad guys). It keeps that sort of anti-war/pro-military stance that Saving Private Ryan had going for it.
Ridley Scott was at the helm of this one, and he does a good job of it.
See it when it spreads out of LA and NY.
This movie is 2 1/2 hours, with 2 of those being people shooting each other.
It's based off of the book about that incredibly bad FUBAR in Somalia back in 1993 (You know, the one where CNN showed Somali mobs dragging around dead servicemen, which in turn led to the US withdrawl).
I'd already seen a number of good documentaries on cable about that battle, its mistakes, and its heroes -so I went into this movie with a bit of a critical eye. And from what I saw I was impressed.
As I mentioned at the beginning, most of this movie is all action. They give the soldier a few decent personalities for story's sake, but no cliche sub-plots (thank god. The battle is the story. The main reviewers are a bit mixed into liked/loved-it groups. Mostly debating over the moral of the movie, or the need for one. Black Hawk down really doesn't try and answer the question of "why?" but gives you a lot of facts and truths to form your own judgements.
While it'd probably make a person think twice before signing up for the armed forces, it doesn't portray the military (in this case Rangers and Delta Force) as the bad guy (or even the Somalies as the bad guys). It keeps that sort of anti-war/pro-military stance that Saving Private Ryan had going for it.
Ridley Scott was at the helm of this one, and he does a good job of it.
See it when it spreads out of LA and NY.
