Review – Black Hawk Down

With such an interesting story to tell and such a gifted storyteller at the helm, this should have been a better movie. Visually this is Ridley Scott business as usual, with lots of jump cuts and heavy filter work. The MTV rah-rah should have made an interesting combination with the sad tale of an American military mission gone horribly wrong in Somalia. However, the story soon sinks under its own weight. Perhaps if the cast had been more tightly focused on a smaller group of characters, or at the very least not been so jam-packed with interchangeable 20-something white boy Hollywood hunks, it might have been easier to empathize with the protagonists. As it was, the whole thing comes across as stupid and random, accurate perhaps but not as genuinely tragic as it might have been. Mildly amusing