★★★ Black Hawk Down

[Twinkletoes: 3.0]

Twinkletoes says: 'As a piece of flag waving filmmaking I guess this thing succeeds very well. There's a lot of hoo hahs and scenes of soldiers being brave and loading weapons and stuff like that. However, that's never really been my thing, and not to diminish the story of the heroics of these soldiers, but perhaps current events provide an unfortunate milieu in which to watch this film. It's certainly well made, taut and exciting but I did have a few of nagging issues. 1. I thought the slightly comic storyline with the 2 soldiers that got left behind was woefully out of place. It almost angered me. 2. I found the film very confusing spatially. What I mean by that is that I never really got the sense that I knew where people were heading or what they were heading to. People were told to cover this corner of the crash site or that quadrant of the building. But it was all meaningless to me and it was frustrating. 3. While I respect the more objective viewpoint in which they decided to tell this story, I feel as though I wish they had found a way to place some blame on someone for this doomed mission. 4. I was a little disappointed that in a film where they continuously stress the idea that no one gets left behind, that they decided to wrap up the storyline of the one American hostage with a blurb at the end of the film. In the end a lot of this is nitpicking. No doubt this is a solid film. I just don't feel its a great film.'