Black Hawk Down
Cinema legend Ridley Scott has directed several iconic film masterpieces. See how IMDb users rank all of his feature films as director.,Some of the radio chatter in the film was taken from actual radio transmissions made during the battle.,When a Ranger throws out a frag grenade, Sgt. Eversman warns his men by yelling "Grenade!" Proper designation would be to yell "Frag out!" as yelling "Grenade!" warns the men of an incoming grenade, not an outgoing one.,"Hoot": When I go home people'll ask me, "Hey Hoot, why do you do it man? What, you some kinda war junkie?" You know what I'll say? I won't say a goddamn word. Why? They won't understand. They won't understand why we do it. They won't understand that it's about the men next to you, and that's it. That's all it is.,The film begins with the words "Based on an Actual Event", followed by the quote from Plato, which leads into the informative prologue with the scenes set in Somalia, East Africa, 1992. The prologue ends with the opening title.,A longer version of the scene where Sanderson inspects Grime's foot was filmed, but cut. Sanderson finds a piece of shrapnel lodged in Grime's foot, but he didn't feel it cause it cauterized on impact.,Edited into G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009),Tall King Dub
Written by Raz Mesinai
Performed by Badawi
Courtesy of Reachout International Records, Inc. (R.O.I.R.)
By arrangement with Ocean Park Music Group,Black Hawk Down is first and foremost an immensely effective war film, but beyond that, its one of the most subtly differently made war films ever. Most war films usually either have a single hero through whom we see everything (i.e. Platoon), or present us with a squad of soldiers, all of whom are identifiable "types" (i.e. Saving Private Ryan). Black Hawk Down takes a different approach, instead giving us a very wide array of characters, none clearly singled out as a hero or type to command the audience's attention. The general effect is to create that feeling of a team army that George C. Scott so ardently expounded to us at the start of Patton. Furthering this feel of military professionalism, the film never cheapens itself by putting too much emotional weight into one moment. The plot moves ahead at a constant pace, cutting from location to location, without slowing down to focus too much on individual soldiers. The effect is of watching documentary footage of a real military operation gone wrong. While the effect of this scripting approach may produce some detachment among viewers on the first viewing, it makes the film all the better on subsequent viewings.

And you'd better believe there will be subsequent viewings, because Ridley Scott has created one of cinema's all-time great pieces of eye candy here. The editing, cinematography, grading, scoring and visual effects all combine to leave a viewer just as drained upon leaving the theatre as these soldiers were on leaving Mogadishu. The intensity of this film's combat is easily equal to Saving Private Ryan, and leaves such pretenders as We Were Soldiers behind in the dust. Black Hawk Down lacks the former's emotional resonance, but unlike the latter, it thrives on the fact, creating a final product as mind-challenging in its construction as it is mind-blowing its visualization.,