A choice must always be made when a film is based on real life. Do you focus on events as they actually happened, or do you re-shape material to form a better story?
A Beautiful Mind, for instance, has been accused of altering the nature and timeline of the events that shaped John Nash's life. These changes made things more dramatic, moving, and clear. I respect these decisions; they made the audience more involved with the character and his life, and were a better way to tell an obscure story to lots of people who would otherwise be in the dark.
Black Hawk Down goes to the other extreme, foregoing character and drama to tell things exactly as they happened. All attention has been focused on explicit re-creation; it's as if the directors traveled back in time to make a documentary of the actual time. If you get to know some of the soldiers along the way, great. But that is not the goal. The goal, rather, is to show what happened, how serious it was, and what our soldiers went through. Period. I respect this choice as well.
No expense has been spared, and what we have here is the most intense combat movie I have ever seen. It is more honest than Saving Private Ryan, where we got to know the soldiers' quirks before they faced their fates. It is more realistic than The Thin Red Line, where every face was a vehicle for poetic statements. And it is more on target with its portrayal of war-as-chaos than Full Metal Jacket.
It is also the least watchable of all these war movies. Part of the appeal of Ryan was how well you got to know the men, even if it wasn't that realistic. The Thin Red Line was able to distance itself from the battle to look at the act of war itself, and contemplate it. Full Metal Jacket used satire to cover up the worst parts of war, making it uniquely Kubrickian. Black Hawk Down is so intense, so faceless, and so constantly nightmarish that it will be a uniformly unpleasant experience for everyone watching it.
Blood flows, bones break, and buildings shatter at such a pace that you can't breathe. And while your heart goes out to the men, you lose track of who is who. Soon, characters can only be told apart by their faces and by who's not dead yet. While you always know where the men are and why they are there, you never quite know the who. By the end you are numb, shaking, and maybe even a little bored. (A friend of mine said, "You can only watch so much mayhem before you tune out.")
However, director Ridley Scott did not make this movie to please you. He did not make this movie to glorify the violence, seek out the pathos, or punch up the wretched irony of it all. He made it to show exactly what happened.
Is it repetitive? What really happened was horribly repetitive. Is it far too gory? What happened to our soldiers and their omnipotent enemy was far too gory. Are the Somalis faceless enemies? To the American soldiers, that's what they became. They were everywhere, determined to resist these invaders of their homeland.
Should we have been there? Did we act accordingly? Did one side provoke the other? The movie cannot say. All it wants to do is to take you there, and show you that these men - right or wrong - went through hell. They went through pure hell in the name of our country. Though the mistakes made in the operation were honest ones, they still cost lives. Even the most highly trained operative can be overwhelmed, even the best medic can fail in the line of duty. And the soldiers must live with it.
The special effects and cinematography are nearly flawless. We never doubt the battle scenes for a moment. We cannot tell when models and computers are used, and when real helicopters are used. The blood looks real, the carnage looks real, everything feels so real. And yet, we are moved past the point of sympathy and simply continue watching, like a duty. This movie is a shadow of what really happened and what is really happening right now millions of miles away from our safe campus.
As a movie, it is long, exhausting, and not much fun. As an attempt to take you to a time and place in history like no movie has before, it is unmatched. The movie's creators made a choice, and I respect them for it. I also will not be standing in line to see it again any time soon.
