• Release Date: 2006-11-14
• Genre: War
• Artist Name: Kim Coates, Ron Eldard, William Fichtner, Tom Guiry, Jason Isaacs, Zeljko Ivanek, Boyd Kestner, Glenn Morshower, Jeremy Piven, Tom Sizemore, Richard Tyson
• Director: Ridley Scott
• AMG Rating:
• MPAA Rating: R
• Category: Feature Films
• Cautions: Not For Children, Graphic Violence, Profanity, War Violence
• Year: 2001
• Running Time: 144
• Movie Country of Origin: USA
• Available Language: English
• Subtitles: Eng/Fre/KO/Por/Spa/TH
  

A quickly forgotten chapter in United States military history is relived in this harrowing war drama from director Ridley Scott, based on a series of Philadelphia Inquirer articles and subsequent book by reporter Mark Bowden. On October 3rd, 1993, an elite team of more than 100 Delta Force soldiers and Army Rangers, part of a larger United Nations peacekeeping force, are dropped into civil war-torn Mogadishu, Somalia, in an effort to kidnap two of local crime lord Mohamed Farah Aidid's top lieutenants. Among the team: Staff Sgt. Matt Eversmann (Josh Hartnett), Ranger Lt. Col. Danny McKnight (Tom Sizemore), the resourceful Delta Sgt. First Class Jeff Sanderson (William Fichtner), and Ranger Spec. Grimes (Ewan McGregor), a desk-bound clerk getting his first taste of live combat. When two of the mission's Black Hawk helicopters are shot down by enemy forces, the Americans -- committed to recovering every man, dead or alive -- stay in the area too long and are quickly surrounded. The ensuing firefight is a merciless 15-hour ordeal and the longest ground battle involving American soldiers since the Vietnam War. In the end, 70 soldiers are injured and 18 are dead, along with hundreds of Somalians. Black Hawk Down was voted one of the top ten films of the year by the National Board of Review prior to its limited Oscar-qualifying release. On the basis of his work in this film, co-star Eric Bana, a relatively unknown Australian actor playing Delta Sgt. First Class "Hoot" Gibson, won the lead in director Ang Lee's version of The Hulk (2003). ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

War

Great Battles, Military Life

Tense, Visceral, Harsh, Forceful, Confrontational, Gritty

DVD Features

• Includes Blu-Wizard technology
• Control your viewing experience
• Customize the way you watch the special features
• Let the Blu-Wizard navigate for you - arm the Blu-Wizard to put the content in context within the film
• Audio commentaries with director Ridley Scott, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, author Mark Bowden & screenwriter Ken Nolan and U.S. special forces veterans
• The essence of combat featurettes

• 2001--British Academy of Film and Television Arts, Slawomir Idziak-Nominee
• 2001--American Film Institute, Jerry Bruckheimer-Nominee
• 2001--American Film Institute, Ridley Scott-Nominee

Review

A riveting account of a devastating battle that resulted from controversial United Nations involvement in Somalia's civil war in 1993, this war picture from director Ridley Scott displays the filmmaker's reliable eye for startling visuals and effective translation of words into pictures. Whether he's employing map-like aerial views of a re-created Mogadishu in order to help the viewer understand how the action's unfolding or using documentary film techniques to reinforce the story's "you are there" realism, Scott's eclectic style synchronizes perfectly with his subject matter's brutal, mindless violence and moral equivocation. The sole drawback of this strategy is that it minimizes the individual soldiers' personal stories, challenging the audience to remain emotionally invested in a group of characters that struggle to move front and center. It's human beings on both sides, after all, that are being fed to the sausage grinder of battle here, but the suffering and bloodshed are not handled with the same emotional skill as the physical action. This seems to be a conscious choice on the part of the filmmakers, who have created a piece that is far more about the logistics of a chain of tragic events than a heartfelt plea for understanding or even an antiwar statement. In a fictitious drama, such a creative decision would be a fatal one, but projects such as the television miniseries Band of Brothers (2001) demonstrate that identifiable characters and emotional beats are expendable (to a degree) in the service of telling an important fact-based story in as accurate a fashion as possible. Black Hawk Down is not the best war movie ever made, but it is one of 2001's best and one of the most truthful about what war is like in the ultra-political, high-tech here and now. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi