I was actually expecting something completely different going into Black Hawk Down. I expected it to be a character drama, one where there was a war going around, but we focused on the character involved in it, with action sequences dispersed just to give the audience the same sense of fear that the characters are supposed to have. I was wrong, dead wrong.
Black Hawk Down is actually almost exactly the opposite of that. After the first thirty minutes, we get almost non-stop action, only broken up for minutes at a time to give us the soldiers’ current situation. Even this is done mostly through orders and simple commands; this is a war zone after all. In fact, characterization is so low in this film, that despite there being some recognizable actors, it has no barring on whether or not the film works. They are all the same once things start going wrong, but in this case, it doesn’t matter.
I think that Black Hawk Down works so well because it doesn’t try to get us to care for each individual character. Like they are portrayed in the film, a tight-knit group, we care about them as a collective unit. No one character gets much more attention than another, meaning that we care for the situation the characters are in.
This situation ends up being a failed raid attempt in Somalia. The mission was to capture two high-ranking people and take them out of the war zone. It was to take no longer than thirty minutes, and would hopefully not result in any casualties. The latter two objectives were not met at all, and to find out if they manage to capture and escort the two people out, you’ll have to watch the film.
After the raid goes wrong, the story more-or-less takes a turn into full-on survival mode for its characters. They still follow military standards, because breaking those means treason, but it’s a fight to survive nonetheless. Characters are shot at, wounded and killed with great frequency over the next two hours, making it a difficult watch at times. These characters, despite not knowing much about them, are humans. It hurts to see people in this kind of situation, especially ones who act like I would imagine humans would act in those circumstances.
The setting, one of war, is portrayed rather beautifully, despite featuring a large number of explosions, gunshots and other things you would expect to find in a war zone. Almost all of the deaths are done with purpose, and this is including ones of the opposing forces. Characters don’t just pick out random people to kill, they kill ones who pose direct threats, and nothing more. There are reasons for this, and most of them come from the need to conserve ammo, but there are also morals that come into play. Some of the characters are hesitant, to say the least, about going into the war zone, let alone killing another person.
This, and how deep a character’s voice is, is about as much characterization as we get into the people within the film. If you were to replace everyone in it with a single actor, you wouldn’t be able to tell much difference. Despite this, all of the actors did a good job. You could tell that they felt for their characters, and that their characters did all have personalities. Too many characters to keep track of all their separate personalities, but there were little nuances they all did which separated them. This comes out the most when a character is about to draw his last breath.
I’ve heard some people complain about how gory Black Hawk Down is, but like the deaths, all the gore is done with purpose. There aren’t unnecessary limbs flying off, or anything similar. It is done with taste, something that Ridley Scott must be congratulated for. The war setting almost gave him the freedom to be as gory as he wanted with the film, but he used restraint. Even a scene where we watch a character put his hand inside of another’s wound is done with purpose.
Something that may very well go unnoticed, and rightfully so, is the soundtrack used. It, like almost everything else, sets the mood beautifully for the rest of the film. It begins with light-hearted songs, but ends up with dramatic, operatic pieces. Not noticing a soundtrack often means that it did its job correctly, and the one in Black Hawk Down definitely does that.
Black Hawk Down doesn’t have well-developed characters, but it doesn’t need them. You will care for the group of soldiers as a group because of this. The film is mostly an action one, but it manages to stir enough emotions to work really well. The soundtrack helps set the mood, and all of the violence is done with purpose. It’s a very good war film that shows us how bad things can actually get.