black hawk down

Well, this weeks film rental was Black Hawk Down.

Usually I watch the film at the weekend, but as discussed earlier in the week I was horribly busy moving shit about this last weekend. I therefore watched the film on Tuesday night.

I noticed there were several commentaries, but given the two and a quarter hour running time, I didn't have the chance to watch these at all. I also have to admit that I was engaged in some e-bay "parceling up" while watching the film, so perhaps wasn't giving it my full attention.

I mention this as a possible excuse for the fact that I wasn't actually hugely keen on the film.

The problem I had was it didn't really seem to gel together properly. The bit that worked was the combat - it felt real, visceral, chaotic and brutal. The bit that didn't work so well was the - I dunno - characters?

There seemed to be lots of cheesy elements. For example, the young soldier who had run out of bullets and is surrounded by a blood-thirsty mob, who takes out a picture of his young wife and small child. Then when the mob attacks him he tries to hold onto the picture, but it gets pulled out if hands.

I dunno - it just felt a bit corny. The problem of course is that this is a story based on real events (well, it's adapted from a book based on real events) and the guy actually survived, so one would assume this is a fairly realistic depiction of what happened. You never know, though - it could just as easily be pure Hollywood invention.

And to be fair there is a note of truth to it anyway. You would expect someone of his age to have a young family and if he loves them, it's hardly surprising for him to be carrying a picture of them with him and for that to be what he thinks about as he's about to die. I dunno - I think my problem with it was that there was a bit too much of that sort of thing.

What didn't help was that the whole thing was told entirely from the American's point of view. All wars when you get down to it are messy, but civil wars are often the nastiest and that's what the Americans are in the middle of, but it's never really explained why all of the local Somalia's seem to want to kill the Americans.

I know boy soldiers are a part of quite a few conflicts around the world, but here we also had what seemed to be ordinary civilian women picking up guns of the fallen and shooting at the Americans. You can understand the warlord's men wanting to kill them, because he's who they're after, but why there's this general animosity is never explained.

Indeed, the Somali are depicting in a very one dimensional way generally. There's a blurb at the beginning giving some idea of the circumstances, but detail on their side is totally absent. We also get hardly any of the characterisation that's given to the Americans.

There's also a weird note of triumph at the end when people get out.

I'm not saying it's painted as a victory, but this was an operation that went horribly and disastrously wrong, but the end of the film doesn't truly feel like that. I dunno - it almost ends too soon, and the end blurb doesn't quite capture the "this was a terrible cock-up" feel.