Movie Details
| Title: | Black Hawk Down | |
| Director: | Ridley Scott | |
| Year: | 2001 | |
| Genre: | War | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 03.04.15 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (10)
- Alien: Covenant
- American Gangster
- Blade Runner
- Body of Lies
- The Counselor
- Kingdom of Heaven
- Legend
- The Martian
- Prometheus
- Robin Hood
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 03.04.15 | Netflix | I'm on record as being a pretty ardent Ridley Scott critic. I think he's one of the more overrated directors working today and that basically he made two good movies 30 years ago and has been riding on that reputation since then. When I tell this to Ridley Scott fans one of the more recent movies that they bring up is Black Hawk Down. I mean it's more than a dozen years old at this point but still... it's more recent than Blade Runner. I'm about to write a big battle sequence and was in the mood for a war film so I thought now would be a good time to revisit this (I think I've only seen it once before in the theater back when it was released) and see if I'm wrong. Eh, I mean I'm not WRONG but I am a bit of an asshole about it. This is a fine movie. It's perfectly competent... It's not boring (although it is a bit exhausting since it feels like 110 of the 130 minutes is one big firefight), it's, you know, decent. Plus you get the added benefit of so many of the cast having gone on to bigger things. And so few of them are American. I never realized the dude who plays Jaime Lannister was in this! As like a sniper with a weird southern accent. There are actually a ton of weird southern accents in this. Eric Bana has the worst. And ok it's competent but this is a few years after Saving Private Ryan. I mean Band of Brothers also came out this year. How does this movie stand up to that miniseries in any way? And also the incident itself. I get a general heroism vibe from the movie but if you think about it... 19 Americans were killed, over 1,000 Somalis!? 50 to 1 sound like pretty decent k/d ratios to me. Maybe that just adds to the patriotic machismo of the movie? "Oh it was such an unfortunate incident... war truly is hell! Of course we still killed over a thousand of the fuckers in one day, but you know those poor families won't have empty caskets to bury!" Sorry if I'm being insensitive. So as you might tell I still didn't love it. I didn't hate it either though and you know it's strange but I still watch Ridley Scott's movies. I think I mostly hate-watch them these days (because they are terrible), but I must not hate them as much as other shit like Brett Ratner movies. |
