While my search for the war-novels continues, I thought to pen one more review on a war-movie. Give a thought! What if your escape route is blocked, you came to enemy’s territory to do a mission of capturing the leader, and instead your exit route blown out, i.e. your helicopter is shot, and now handful of your team has to survive in the area surrounded by enemies, when you have to find a route back to your safe base is what the theme of this movie, which is based on the historical non-fiction war book of same name written by Mark Bowden, and the movie’s name is ‘Black Hawk Down’. While I am short-listing the book out of some options I derived to order next, lets see what this wonderful movie directed by Ridley Scott has in store for us.
As already pointed out, this movie is based on a real event – US Army, marines, and NAVY seals attempt to capture the Somali Warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid in Mogadishu, which was later renamed later as ‘Battle of Mogadishu’. And while doing this the US helicopter Black Hawk was hit by missiles from the surrounding warlord’s army, and which results in stranded units of US army in the middle of swarming enemies lines. Now their target is to get out alive and to reach the safe UN base in Somalia, and one important rule they had to follow – Leave no men behind. Some of the men of units are – SSG Matt Eversmann (Josh Hartnett), SPC John Grimes (Ewan McGregor), LTC Danny McKnight (Tom Sizemore), the new-starter PFC Todd Blackburn (Orlando Bloom), and the medic Doc Kurt Schmid (Hugh Dancy).
I hope you all are aware of a movie named ‘The Hurt Locker’ directed by James Cameron’s wife Kathryn Bigelow, and it won the maximum Oscar awards at 82nd Academy Awards beating even the James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’. That movie was shot like a documentary (I have seen it), so it gave a feel of realness, like you’re watching the war by actually standing in midst of it, but to me, somehow I get bored by it. But this movie which came 7 years before was a much better watch if you want to see the real happenings on a live war field. This 2001 movie was shot more like in the movie format, and you can actually feel yourself tensed throughout the gripping war-drama, you yourself can feel the fear of you being stranded in the party of wolves. You don’t have enough ammunition, nobody’s coming to save you, you’re only handfuls in front of the whole enemy militia and you want to live. You should watch this movie if you haven’t. All the actors performed as was expected and you can feel the horribleness of their actual situations. You are also treated to some gory images; the scenes where your co-soldier is hit and the blood is pouring out of him, and the medic is trying to stitch him together which will help him to survive, though a little, make you sit through the edge of your seat. But you have to have heart to watch them, though it is not that much gory as you can expect of the ‘SAW’ series (which I can never watch, and I don’t want to!). Each and every actor gave his best in whatever screen-space they got. The scenes become intense, and that is where you congratulate the director for giving such a real movie.
Ridley Scott who co-produced this movie alongwith Jerry Bruckheimer has given us other good movies like ‘Alien’, ‘Gladiator’, ‘Hannibal’ & ‘American Gangster’ and ‘Prometheus’ (it was a bad one though out of the list I have watched), and he directed this one very well, while the idea behind making & directing this movie came from Simon West (who wants to direct it). The movie is shot well (Slawomir Idziak) on the sets which looks real. The film is shot at Morocco, in the cities of Rabat, Sale and Kenitra. Mark Bowden wrote the adaptation of his book for the film, supported by Steven Zaillian, Sam Shepard & Eric Roth, but Screenplay was credited to Ken Nolan, who rewrote the script and other works related to other writers. I have also read the original book behind the movie and I must appreciate that it should be considered as one of the good attempts where the movie adaptation scores equal or more than the original work. This movie was made on a high budget of $92 million and it received a positive nod from the critics worldwide (76% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes) and running length goes to around 2.5 hrs.
In the heap of good war-movies like ‘Flags of our Fathers’, ‘Saving Private Ryan’, ‘Inglorious Basterds’, ‘Braveheart’, ‘The Hurt Locker’, I will give this one a thumbs up and a must watch nod. Do get it and see it, while I will soon be ordering a less-known war-novel ‘Matterhorn’ written by Karl Marlantes in my Feb’s quota to satisfy my reading hunger. My take for movie 4.5/5.
GRuchirG.
Jai Raam ji ki :)