But the film doesn't have the courage to deliver anything but a battle. Black Hawk Down is happy to display the bravery of the soldiers and their pilots thrown into an increasingly hopeless situation. It's as if the only American deaths allowed are either tell-my-wife-I-love-her slow expirations on stretchers or ones by Alamo-styled suicidal heroics. We see the briefest glimpse of it in the movie and for all its bloodbath details elsewhere, it's curious that it has been largely excised. Gary Gordon being dragged through the streets. The most memorable image of the actual event was the televised sight of the corpse of Master Sgt. So, after a meet-the-squad session with requisite grunt philosophy about the country they've been sent to help, we're soon into an exhausting, harrowing firefight which makes the opening of Saving Private Ryan look gun-shy by comparison. And working from an insubstantial script, it's only the tough nut actors like Tom Sizemore, William Fichtner and Aussie Eric Bana who create much lasting impression.
After the blood and grime builds up it's hard to tell which soldier is which - though helpfully their names are inscribed on their helmets. Certainly those cliches get spectacular action to go with them, with a convincing level of gore, but that's about it. Yes, Ridley Scott's movie might be "based on an actual event" but all that means is the film has taken journalist Mark Bowden's non-fiction best-seller about the ill-fated 1993 mission by helicopter-borne US troops in Mogadishu, Somalia, and pared back its insights to a set of comrades-in-arms cliches. Other than that Black Hawk Down doesn't really have a lot to say. By RUSSELL BAILLIE (Herald rating: * * * ) Would you look at that - war is still hell.
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