Black Hawk Down really was a tour de force for director Ridley Scott and his crew of technicians and actors. I’ve see this film so many times it’s almost laughable, but revisiting it just recently, I was struck by just how immersive of a film experience this really is, with few rivals. It’s the gold-standard for combat movies, and Scott’s uncompromising vision of urban warfare set precedents in the early 2000’s and has been constantly imitated ever since. Borrowing from cinematic touchstones like The Battle of Algiers and Saving Private Ryan, this was Jerry Bruckheimer’s stab at Oscar gold and he must’ve been livid when Scott was nominated for Best Director but the picture itself was short-changed in the top category. It’s the rare Bruckheimer picture to be taken truly “seriously” by critics, and one of the few pictures in his entire filmography that strived for something more than just “entertainment.” Scott and Bruckheimer made sure to stick to the core of Mark Bowden’s riveting and devastating book, and in doing so, created one of the most visceral pieces of action filmmaking ever constructed.
It’s a physically exhausting movie to sit through, harrowing all throughout, with a constant sense of dread and impending violence. With stunning spatial clarity and obsessive technical finesse, Scott and cinematographer Slawomir Idziak created a gorgeous yet brutal film that pummeled the audience with a sense of sustained cinematic intensity that few other films have matched (Peter Berg’s recent Lone Survivor and portions of Randall Wallace’s We Were Soldiers come close). I saw this film 10 times theatrically, a personal record for one movie. Granted, I saw it 5 nights in a row at my college campus theater (for free), but for me, this is one of the most exciting, most intensely realized portraits of warfare that’s ever been created. I also had the chance to work on this film during pre-production during my days as an intern at Jerry Bruckheimer Films – I’ll never forget the sight of Bruckheimer, Scott, and Joe Roth doing laps around the Santa Monica compound, smoking cigars, talking about the film. I had the experience to hang out with production designer Arthur Max quite a bit, and Scott would come into the room and check out all of the models and boards and plans, deciding where the helicopters would land, etc. Totally wild.
Podcasting Them Softly 