As a war film, "Black Hawk Down" is first rate. It's exciting, well paced, and full of lots of action. Director Ridley Scott proves to be at home with the adrenalin rush of modern technological warfare, piling on the firefights, helicopter crashes, and bloody carnage. Continuing the visceral tradition of war films post-"Saving Private Ryan", "Black Hawk Down" scatters body parts round the screen like confetti.
The problem is that its subject - American soldiers fighting Somali Muslims - is too close to the current world situation to suit a no-brains action story. In a belated attempt to mould the film to suit the post-September 11th climate, the film makers have added a series of opening and closing titles that desperately try to say something about the Battle of Mogadishu's wider significance, but these simply seem hastily written and ill advised.
"Black Hawk Down" doesn't so much lose sight of the political factors behind the action, as never actually notice them until after the event making it less a film about the American experience in Somalia than a patriotic airbrushing of what was actually America's worst day of combat since Vietnam.
The problem is that its subject - American soldiers fighting Somali Muslims - is too close to the current world situation to suit a no-brains action story. In a belated attempt to mould the film to suit the post-September 11th climate, the film makers have added a series of opening and closing titles that desperately try to say something about the Battle of Mogadishu's wider significance, but these simply seem hastily written and ill advised.
"Black Hawk Down" doesn't so much lose sight of the political factors behind the action, as never actually notice them until after the event making it less a film about the American experience in Somalia than a patriotic airbrushing of what was actually America's worst day of combat since Vietnam.