wcactusboy I read the Black Hawk Down book. And after watching this movie I felt it was rushed. But after realizing it was nearly 2 1/2 hours I thought they did an excellent job. Very Accurate.

chevelle1965 Just like most the reviews on here say it's a great action flick with a great presentation and has some really great actors amazing to see in a movie like this. Great movie for Americans and seeing what our soldiers go through in battle. But wait everyone hates Americans these days right?? Us Americans have a lot of stories like this to make great movies about so I'm sorry if your boring ass country doesn't. Lol but bring on all the American hate! I can see it coming from a mile away which is the main reason I'm writing this review. American propaganda! Blah blah blah wa wa wa. Cry like the little babies you are. Lol us American don't have any hate like that tworads your little bitch ass country because why?? Oh yeah we could give a fuk about you or where your from. So shut up and enjoy the movie or go watch your soaps, BBC or whatever you like. All you cry babies out there just make me laugh. You hate Americans so much then do something about it bitch

scifiducky I just want to weigh in on a few issues...Lots of people are giving 1 star because the movie, based on a true story, skipped some historical context. First of all, show me a "based on a true story" without spin; good luck finding one. But moreover, many commenters seemed to leap to the conclusion that due to its absence this film tacitly supported US actions and that US could do no wrong. That's a very different film than I saw which depicted a blundering general feigning sophistication. If you're of this mindset, I challenge you to consider what people would say if the Somali militias were made to be the heroes. Do you think the US was there for no reason at all? They just showed up and started bombing everyone? Of course not, there's a whole long chain of cause and effect, and the fact that the writers selected a particular point in time because they thought it would make the most compelling movie doesn't make them blameworthy for not cataloguing the totality of human history. Moreover, there's nothing particularly nationalistic about this movie. Everyone is acting based on necessity, not some kind of patriotic urge. The mission is about rescuing a downed pilot and the perils involved with that mission. There really isn't any flag-waving, very little back- patting (and what there is doesn't last long) and no discussion about the enemy being barbarians or whatever else other reviews would have you believe. The Somalis were very adamant about fighting off the American intruders, but they weren't depicted as fighting each other, looting, pillaging, raping or anything else like that. Nor was there ever a time where waves and waves of them were being mowed down, and if anything, given the resources depicted in the film, they acted quite cohesively and effectively for a poor militia against the greatest military in the world. You might want to check your own assumptions before saying they were like barbarians or savages or whatever.I also don't agree with users who think the characters were shallow. The characters were not all cookie-cutter facsimiles of each other. Josh Hartnett was a green platoon leader, sympathetic to the locals in the face of jocular ridicule from most of his platoon. The Captain was a stubborn SOP junkie with ridiculous sports metaphors, the general, as mentioned feigned sophistication, cracked jokes in the TOC, and ultimately came to understand the consequences of his actions, Tom Sizemore was a fantastic gung-ho major (I think) with some of the my favorite one-liners ("Nothing takes 5 minutes!"), Orlando Bloom was a wet-behind the ears nervous, anxious newbie hoping to prove himself, Tom Hardy was just trying to make it through, Ewan McGregor was resentful of his lot in the army and then jumped on the opportunity to be all he could be, and on and on. Moreover, if you've actually served in the army, you'd know that most of these guys are basically kids and don't really have much character chiseled into them yet. As a veteran, it FELT like they were soldiers. When they were prepping for the mission, ribbing each other, and generally chewing the fat, THAT was where it was MOST real to me. I can't attest to the combat because we never had an engagement of this magnitude in Iraq (mostly chasing snipers and dodging rockets, mortars and IEDs), but the characterization of the soldiers was spot on. It also made a lot more sense that the general and the major had the most depth, the special forces guys (who were obviously older) had some gravitas to them, and the rangers were mostly nervous, youthful and similar.So if you buy all that, then even the detractors admit that the acting, directing, production, sound, etc. were all amazing. I'm not a huge war buff, but I've seen a healthy share, and for me this tops them all. I prefer it over Saving Private Ryan, Platoon, Apocalypse Now, Heartbreak Ridge, American Sniper, Full Metal Jacket, Zero Dark Thirty, We Were Soldiers, Three Kings, and slightly but surely even over Hurt Locker and Glory. I think Jarhead is comparable in terms of realism, but that's not really a war movie. Hope this was useful!

pniemeyer-47222 I have one problem with "Black Hawk Down", and that is that it spreads itself a bit too thin. There are a LOT of characters in this movie, and while some of them do get fairly deep motivations and backstories, by the end of the film, I still had difficulty telling them apart. So if this review is light on specific character names, I want you to know why. Part of the difficulty of making a movie about a real-life story is figuring out just how accurate you can make it without losing the audience. For the most part, this film succeeds.Ridley Scott is a brilliant technical director and visual stylist. He knows how to stage action that is thrilling without being glamorous (can you imagine what Michael Bay would have done to this material?), and the editing and sound on this film are absolutely spectacular. The film deals with a failed U.S. military raid on a Somalian warlord who was preventing U.N. food shipments from reaching the poor and the needy. The time frame of the film is only a few days (I think), and that lends the whole movie a you-are-there quality that is essential to this kind of storytelling.There are a lot of recognizable faces in this film, but this is not a star-driven movie. Josh Hartnett gives just what is probably his best performance ever as an idealistic young squad leader. Ewan McGregor plays a glorified secretary who gets promoted to a proper foot soldier when the crap hits the fan. Tom Sizemore plays a no-nonsense commander who gradually watches the whole mission fail from a distance. Eric Bana shines as a seasoned soldier who, to some, seems to take almost too much pleasure in his work. Rounding out the cast are plenty of other talented people: Tom Hardy, Jason Isaacs, Ewen Bremner, Sam Shepard, William Fichtner, and more. This is a film that shines in its little moments. One soldier fires his gun too close to another's head, deafening him. Another steals through an occupied house where a mother sits huddled with her children to get away from the fighting on the street. A donkey wanders through dangerous territory, still hitched to a wagon. This is not the deepest war movie I've ever seen, but it makes its points with a relative minimum of speechifying and jingoism. (There are a few of those moments later on, but they feel mostly earned.) It stands up to repeat viewings, too, which is kind of rare for a movie based on real events. There are moments where I wish this film had dug a little deeper under its characters' skin, but then again, it might have sacrificed tension in doing so. And if there's one thing that this movie is, it's gripping. I was not in the least surprised to hear "The Minstrel Boy" over the end credits. That song sums up the movie fairly well.