Posted on 12/29/2001 12:10:29 AM PST by Pharmboy
December 28, 2001
Black Hawk Down" has such distinctive visual aplomb that its jingoism starts to feel like part of its atmosphere. Establishing mood through pictorial means is the director Ridley Scott's most notable talent. There may be no working director more accomplished at wringing texture out of the color blue than the prodigious and now prolific Mr. Scott; you'd swear that with his dazzling washes of blues and sand tones, he was inventing additional hues on the spot. Because Mr. Scott's eye delivers so much information, he then is at a loss to give the material a proper emotional grounding. "Black Hawk Down" is like Mr. Scott's "G.I. Jane" but this time with an all-boy cast.
Sam Shepard, as Major General Garrison, seems to be smoking a Montecristo No. 2 primarily so that billowing clouds of Cuban smoke can register in the war room; it doesn't help that the cigar has been given as much characterization as anyone in the movie. There are plot flags visible beside Old Glory. As in "Pearl Harbor," the battle in "Black Hawk Down" is an eye-catching misfire, color-coordinated down to the tracer rounds.
The film, whose title refers to downed military helicopters, dramatizes the failed United States mission to help relieve famine in Mogadishu, Somalia, late in 1992 by securing supply routes against Somali militias. Several hundred Somalis and 18 American soldiers lost their lives the next year in what was called the Battle of the Black Sea. The film was adapted from the best-selling account by Mark Bowden, which stacked up detail; Mr. Scott's slathering of visual elements is the pictorial correlative of the author's work.
The producer Jerry Bruckheimer seems to have been making Ridley Scott movies his entire career, but this is the first time he and Mr. Scott have collaborated. Tony Scott, Mr. Ridley's twin brother, teamed with Mr. Bruckheimer on movies like "Top Gun," the gold — or rather gold-filled — standard for incoherent militaristic propaganda. "Black Hawk Down" is "Top Gun" on an all-protein diet. The soldiers, mostly ground troops, are much leaner than Tom Cruise was in that 1986 film, though they grin just as righteously.
The movie quickly sketches the broad parameters for the story: American troops, in Mogadishu as part of a United Nations peacekeeping effort, plan to kidnap members of the inner circle of Gen. Muhammad Farah Aidid, the Somali warlord. Lean, lissome white soldiers with teeth pearlier than their eyes prowl the streets looking to do damage — all except sad-eyed Sergeant Eversmann (Josh Hartnett), who smiles shyly and says he wants to make a difference. The vibrating melancholy of Hans Zimmer's score communicates the futility of Eversmann's proclamation. And when two helicopters are brought down and the mission is converted into a rescue, things get worse than anyone could have imagined.
"Black Hawk Down" wants to be about something, and in the midst of the meticulously staged gunfire, the picture seems to choose futility arbitrarily. The handsomely staged gunplay and explosions, rigorously matched to exacting Dolby Digital in selected theaters, abound, while a cast of non-American actors like Ewan McGregor, Eric Bana and Orlando Bloom try out their Yankee soldier accents, with vowels so oddly enunciated that you expect them to be singled out as foreign spies. Again, Mr. Scott spot-welds his extraordinary painterly application of talent to video game detachment; his "Gladiator" looked like a Playstation 2 product designed by Bruegel. But the mercilessness here is gruesome.
In "Black Hawk Down," the lack of characterization converts the Somalis into a pack of snarling dark-skinned beasts, gleefully pulling the Americans from their downed aircraft and stripping them. Intended or not, it reeks of glumly staged racism. The only African-American with lines, Specialist Kurth (Gabriel Casseus), is one of the American soldiers who want to get into the middle of the action; his lines communicate his simplistic gung-ho spirit. His presence in this military action raises questions of racial imbalance that "Black Hawk Down" couldn't even be bothered to acknowledge, let alone answer.
To make some obvious points about Western interests in oil, this picture imitates a few scenes in David O. Russell's remarkable 1999 war picture "Three Kings," where the context was not sacrificed to politics. In "Black Hawk Down," though, the backhanded attempt to provide the most minimal of contexts seems glib, as does Mr. Scott's skillful and facile handling of the action sequences, which supply an undeniably visceral excitement.
The actors are mostly called upon for the kind of "it's a man's man's man's man's world" sloganeering before heading off to fight that characterizes most Bruckheimer films: dated martial wisecracks of the "Let's rock 'n' roll" variety. (When Sean Connery coughed, "Good to go" in "The Rock," it was the death knell of hip-hop as we know it.)
It's tiring to watch the actors, many of whom have appeared spouting these lines in previous Bruckheimer productions, doing the same thing; they're like rowdy guys who were left behind in Movie Star High School. This unintentional repetition fits, since sitting through the accomplished but meaningless "Black Hawk Down" is like being trapped in an action film version of "Groundhog Day," condemned to sit through the same carnage over and over.
"Black Hawk Down" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian) for a barrage of violence, dismemberment and mayhem, and the usual accompanying panicked strong language.
BLACK HAWK DOWN
Directed by Ridley Scott; written by Ken Nolan, based on the book with that title by Mark Bowden; director of photography, Slawomir Idziak; edited by Pietro Scalia; music by Hans Zimmer; production designer, Arthur Max; produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and Mr. Scott; released by Columbia Pictures. Running time: 143 minutes. This film is rated R.
WITH: Josh Hartnett (Eversmann), Ewan McGregor (Grimes), Tom Sizemore (McKnight), Eric Bana (Hoot), William Fichtner (Sanderson), Ewen Bremner (Nelson), Sam Shepard (Garrison), Gabriel Casseus (Kurth), Kim Coates (Wex), Hugh Dancy (Schmid), Ron Eldard (Durant), Ioan Gruffudd (Beales), Thomas Guiry (Yurek), Charlie Hofheimer (Smith), Danny Hoch (Pilla), Jason Isaacs (Steele), Zeljko Ivanek (Harrell), Glenn Morshower (Matthews), Jeremy Piven (Wolcott), Brendan Sexton III (Kowalewski), Johnny Strong (Shughart), Richard Tyson (Busch) and Orlando Bloom (Blackburn).
I like it already - BEST cigars in the world!!!
Sounds like it reeks of Truth.
When has a Clinton Butt-Boy ever let the facts get in the way of a story.
The review in Comming Attractions pretty much nailed it. Read the book first(or read most of it in Philly Inquier web site). Definitely go see it. I will pay to see it again when I recover the emotional fortitude.
The fact that the Clinton/Aspin/Powell fiasco is not addressed is IMHO a positive. The focus of the film is the action on the ground in Mog. It would have been a mistake to try to deal with the poll driven politics.
You will be proud of our guys. Can you believe a Santa Monica crowd applauding a war movie? Believe it. Go see it.
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