| << Newer | Article #42 | Older >> |
Black Hawk Down
Finally got around to seeing Black Hawk Down last night (you'll notice this is a trend in my movie selections -- we tend to only see a handful of movies in theaters each year and save the rest for DVD). I'm generally not really into war movies, but this one had me intrigued in part because I don't really remember very much about our involvement in Somalia back in 1993.
This is one of those movies that just does not let up. Once things start going badly for the U.S. forces, it just spirals downhill and you're trapped in there with them, caught under enemy fire. I found that to be one of the movie's better aspects. Where I felt it was weaker was in how it handled the characters -- there were too many of them and they all blended together (in part because they looked very similar). People are killed and wounded left and right, and I couldn't keep track of whether or not they were someone I was invested in or not.
In fact, it helped a lot to watch the semi-fluffy documentary that was also on the DVD. That introduced us to the main characters in a manner where I was like, "Oh, it was THAT guy! Now it makes a lot more sense!" In the end, I felt like I should have been saddened by individual deaths, but I actually just kind of felt that the movie was very grim as a whole.
It's also kind of funny in that there were a lot of actors I should have recognized but didn't (Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore). The only ones that caught my eye during the film were William Fichtner (who I recognized as one of the Amway salesmen from Go) and Eric Bana (who I recognized from Hulk -- a movie I actually liked a lot more than others seem to).
Overall, a pretty good movie, but not a great one. 3/4 stars.