Verdict:
There is a trope for which American action movies have become infamous: white main character guns down a legion of faceless incompetent enemies, usually of non-white variety. The main character will be given some great cause as an excuse to kill all those people. Black Hawk Down has good action and presentation, but it is also a textbook example of that type of movie. I am not complaining. These kinds of movies are fun. But it seems that Black Hawk Down presents itself as being something more than that, and I don’t think that it is.
The movie opens with a message about Mohamed Adid using hunger as a tool of terror (Somali Civil War from 1990s), but the struggle of the local people and the mission at hand is just an excuse for our gun toting heroes to shoot some stuff. Once introduced, that setting has little to no significance. The rest of the film comprises of hostile situations in which the US soldiers find themselves and shoot their way out of. Towards the end there is an attempt at some message about brotherhood. It rings incredibly hollow.
In the real battle of Mogadishu this movie is based on, the US operatives were supported by the foreign UNOSOM troops from Malaysia and Pakistan. This is a good opportunity if you want to explore the theme of brotherhood, but the movie doesn’t incorporate it.
There is a scene in this film where the US soldiers are surrounded by a group of Africans and these locals are jumping backward and forward, angry and loud. They are made to look like a bunch of incoherent gorillas or pack of hungry rabid dogs, as the cornered US soldier bravely defends himself. That’s what this movie is actually all about.
The cinematography is raw, chaotic, and most importantly, so very cool. Helicopters land almost on your head, with every possible angle and viewpoint being utilized, including from outer space. The smoke and dirty textures come at you through the screen. Everything’s on fire and rockets are flying around, captured with shaky cam for extra realism. The film has a characteristic look of black silhouettes against the yellow dusty background of Mogadishu, which computer games and other movies have since tried to copy.
The presentation is made all the more effective thanks to Hans Zimmer’s score. The action music has Arabic influence but also has some Western distorted guitar mixed in. The sorrowful singing of Baaba Maal, Denez Prigent and Lisa Gerard tcuts into your soul and breathes life into the score.
There is a load of high-grade actors in this film, which seems to be in line with other big war movie productions like the Thin Red Line and Saving Private Ryan. This shows the movie’s aspiration, except Black Hawk Down lacks the same epic setting and themes as those other war movies have. Therefore, the value of these actors is questionable when they spend so much of the movie’s time covered in helmets, goggles and dust while shooting at things instead of talking, and when they do talk, they are just yelling out army lingo or mission-related information. Black Hawk Down is pretty good action movie, as long as you do not expect it to be more than an extended male-dominated gun fight.