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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Black Hawk Down

The resistable rise of Reidcourchie

12:01 / 08.02.02

Has anyone actually seen this film and what do they think?

15:23 / 08.02.02

I enjoyed it - but left the theatre indifferent toward the whole experience -- quality work from Mr.Scott but it still felt like it was missing something ... and for the life of me I can't figure out what that elusive something is ... uh, maybe its impact. The wall to wall violence grips you but it doesn't shake you by the balls the way certain other war movies do .... ah, I still don't know if that's it. I whole heartedly recommend it (if you can handle the gritty bits) but still can't get myself to side with the critics and say it's one of the best movie of the year.

15:31 / 08.02.02

There's no narrative. It's all boom, bang, bash. Apart from the opening half hour - which is cheeseriffic - you never get to know anything of the characters or their beliefs/opinions. Half the time, you can't tell which character it is that you're watching, where you are or what's going on. If the purpose is to show the chaos of a battlefield, then I guess (as I've never been in one) that it's successful.

Odd how so much is made of the one helicopter pilot getting captured and becoming a hostage, when the mention of his rescue comes in the form of a couple of lines of text before the captions roll. Almost like there's an entire stretch of the film missing.

Ridiculously one-sided movie, too. The civilians are all portrayed as barbaric butchers, animals.

[ 08-02-2002: Message edited by: E. Randy Deep Joy ]

15:44 / 08.02.02

The civilians all seem to get mown down in their hundreds, without hardly any pause to consider their human story- it's like Aliens or something.

I was genuinely quite shaken by the film, though- it's all machine guns rattling thunderously in your face and metal clanking noises - but the gore is pretty believable. It's also the only war film where the main characters are all exactly my age and era - from the clothes and sunglasses they wear, the way they talk and so on, you can recognise it as early 90s, and that maybe makes it a bit more of a shock when people start getting blown to bits in front of you.

16:01 / 08.02.02

"Black Hawk Down" – Hollywood drags bloody corpse of truth across movie screens

quote:In his book The New Military Humanism, Noam Chomsky cites other under-reported facts. "In October 1993, criminal incompetence by the US military led to the slaughter of 1,000 Somalis by American firepower." Chomsky writes. "The official estimate was 6-10,000 Somali casualties in the summer of 1993 alone, two-thirds women and children. Marine Lt. Gen. Anthony Zinni, who commanded the operation, informed the press that 'I'm not counting bodies . . . I'm not interested.' Specific war crimes of US forces included direct military attacks on a hospital and on civilian gatherings. Other Western armies were implicated in serious crimes as well. Some of these were revealed at an official Canadian inquiry, not duplicated by the US or other governments."

Media Workers Against War invites you to join a condemnation of this brutal depiction of fiction as fact. Assemble at the Empire Cinema, Leicester Square, 7pm, Wednesday February 13.

Also, watch out for the bit in the end credits where the numbers of dead on either side are totted up. 18 American soldiers died. Between 500 and 1,000 Somalis died (reports differ, and I can't remember the exact figure provided in the film).

The names of the Americans are then blazoned across the screen.

Scott has said that he's tried to make a film that doesn't tell the audience how to feel. The ending fails in that task spectacularly.

[ 08-02-2002: Message edited by: E. Randy Deep Joy ]

10:22 / 09.02.02

The dawning of a new push in propoganda. Mr Scott is being a lapdog. He should know better and pull the movie.

16:22 / 09.02.02

as discussed in the 'white supremacist....' thread in conversation recently, various nazi websites (skrewdriver/blood and honour) seem to love this film. after reading these posts, i'm beginning to see why.

09:05 / 12.02.02

Person in psychology class: And then those locals lift up this American and rip him to shreds!

Rest of spychology class: God, that's awful!! How could anyone do that?!

What the fuck?! Did the first speaker just... miss most of the movie, or what?! You know, the bit with the locals getting ripped to shreds by American gun fire!

No, I haven't seen it, by my psychology calls is notoriously fucking dumb, and I thought I'd sahre their little pearl of wisdom with you all...

09:05 / 12.02.02

I'm beginning to believe that the entire interpretation of this film as "heroic" directly relates to the particular colors of the lens over people's eyes post-9/11.
Had it been seen abstracted from that context by the US public, there would have been a more ambiguous reaction.

I saw the book as a depiction of a colossal fuckup of the part of the US military, directly as a result of shitty political decisions, which would up with lots of people getting unneccesarily dead... probably the best example of the former since the 48th-parallel debacle in Korea or the whole of Vietnam....

It sounds from y'all like the movie has been tweeked to turn this image about...although my sister [I haven't seen it] thought of the film in the terms I inumerated above.

21:38 / 12.02.02

Nah, it pretty much does show the Americans making a fuck up of things. It gives an interesting insight into how frail, human and, at times, incompetent people in the armed forces are- like everyone else- and how the making of mistakes in this kind of arena can have devastatingly unpleasant consequences.
The film really made me feel quite traumatised for a couple of days and I'm never like that with films (well alright, Once were Warriors, Requiem for a Dream blah blah).