Black Hawk Down (English) Review

Somalia, 1992. The land is torn apart in civil strife as warring landlords cause widespread destruction and famine on a biblical scale. The international aid agencies' food supplies are being usurped by reigning warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid, and in order to get rid of the scum, the US Special Forces are brought in to restore calm.

Or at least the opening credits seem to believe so. 'Cos that wasn't me in the last paragraph, but the filmmaker carefully drawing up the lines so that we see just what he intended us to see and nothing more. Clever deal, come to think of it - the typical mid-afternoon dose of Americana just to spunk up things a bit. Heck, who are we to argue? We'll just go with the flow.

Only, going with the flow leads nowhere either, as at the end of the movie you've seen nothing much but the opening of the movie:

Scene 1: battlefield
Scene 1,359: battlefield
Scene 4,556,372,768: the end (battlefield)

But I guess it would be pretty kookie to expect anything more from a war movie - unless, of course, it's Pearl Harbor ...or even Asoka!

Well, like I said, it's just 1992-93, a time when all we were doing was playing regular visits to the cavity fillers and braces fixers. The Special Forces in the capital of Somalia, Mogadishu, are trying hard to control the local warlord. The elite Delta forces and army rangers, along with their teams of Teddy Boy Tom Cruises (pretty young white boys), come up with a half-baked plan to extract badass leader Aidid.

In the midst of the organized chaos of some great camera sweeps, time stamps and some really cool music, we almost fail to take note of the Black Hawk Chopper that gets shot in the rump. Now that it finally has our attention, we spend the next 133 minutes trying to deal with the antics of the rescue team that is sent to rescue the other rescue team that had been sent to rescue the chopper pilots (wheeze!).

It's a mad scramble full of zipping bullets, exploding bullets, charging tanks and bullets and stuff. The body count rises dramatically from 1 to 9,534,734,724,628,732, and the screen fills up with body parts of assorted sizes and colors as we are drawn into the horrors of war. Saving Private Ryan looks like chicken feed now!

Anyway, the movie doesn't waste any time on characters or emotions, except for a motley crew of morons on the rescue team who seem more like The Three Stooges in Mogadishu rather than The Three Musketeers.

Bam, bam and more bam later, its chop, chop, chop, drag, scream and explode, bam, bam, bam and a final bam convincing you that this flick is a big time shoot-'em-up flick. With big time blood and guts spraying everywhere, you'll emerge feeling like you've just majorly battled it out with the evil forces.

Random scenes of nothing but the battle fill the time gap between the start and the end of the flick, and unless you're low on testosterone and need a refill, there is pretty much no educated reason why anyone should see this flick.

There is one memorable moment, though, when a soldier comes across a disembodied hand and stuffs it in his pack. Unfortunately the hand rifled through the pack and made off with two bars of Snickers and a pack of fags!

Well, now that the best part is out, d'ya still wanna catch the flick?