Black Hawk Down

Riding shotgun through an infamously botched 1993 military mission in urban Somalia, Ridley Scott's dusty, bloody, sometimes agonizing Black Hawk Down provides a realistic, cinematically astute taste of war (it nabbed an Oscar for editing), without the kind of nerve-wracking hyper-authenticity that makes you feel as if you might get shot while watching it. Employing amazingly crisp, handsome aerial cinematography and a distinctive color palette to artistically enhance the ambiance of battle commotion, the style here tends to overshadow the character development of actors Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Sam Shepard, and Tom Sizemore, among others, but the film does capture a collective sense of the soldiers' frustration, dedication, fear, grief, and above all, heroism in the face of impossible odds. However, because Scott puts so much emphasis on said heroism, some viewers may well mistake this film for a pure flag-waver instead of what it truly is: a condemnation of war that still honors the warriors themselves. Recommended. (R. Blackwelder)