Black Hawk Down (US)

After the dissapointing "Pearl Harbor".Producer Jerry Bruckheimer bounced back with this gritty,unflinching,and terrific war film.This time around,Bruckheimer hired the great Ridley Scott instead of Pearl`s Michael Bay."Black Hawk Down" is a striking re-creation of the battle of Mogadishu.
Pietro Scalia won an Oscar for his editing.He won his first for Oliver Stone`s "JFK".

The movie is presented in 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen and is an excellent presentation of Slawomir Idziak`s Oscar nominated cinematography.The image is quite sharp and remains very clear.Film grain is noticable in several scenes,but this is intentional.

Since this movie won an Oscar for best sound,You would
expect the audio on this disc to terrific.The Dolby 5.1 track is
stunningly good and never lets up.The bullets and explosions
will rattle your living room and Hans Zimmer`s music sounds
terrific.

Now here is where the disc falters: the extras.There are plans
to release a special editon ,but why not now? The main extra
on this disc on a 24-minute featurette that is fairly promo but
is somewhat interesting.The other extras are trailers for "The
One" and Spider-Man",but no trailer for "Hawk"

I plan on buying the special editon,but this version is worth seeing more than once.

This is the review for the region 2 disk, which is supposed to be identical to the region 1 disk.
Another tragic story that could`ve made a wonderful movie. Yet, it didn`t.
Instead of focusing on the story, Ridley Scott decided he wanted a sonic extravaganza. Boy, did he succeed. I felt that the entire movie revolves around shooting and shooting and shooting and none of the characters made me empathic to it.
The video transfer is good. There are no compression signs at all. The color palette is quite unique. The movie features a very distinct yellow hue in most of the shots. Most of the warm colors are highly saturated, while the cold colors are a bit de-saturated. While clearly an artistic choice, this sometimes causes some detail lost.
The DD 5.1 soundtrack is excellent. The surrounds are constantly used for bullet noises, explosions and other war zone related sound effects. Clearly, this is an explosive soundtrack, but I`d say the Oscar for it was a bit...stale.
The menus are still with music.
The extras include a behind the scene look and a music video.
Bottom line - clearly a show-off movie for your sound system. As for the plot - well, you better look elsewhere.

After the terrible excuse of a movie pearl harbour, Jerry Bruckhiemer must have thought that was the end of his producing days, but no, he`s bounced back with the greatest
movie he has ever produced, instead of having Michael Bay direct (thank God he didn`t) he chose film making legend Ridley Scott to direct.The movie is a blast! The special features are crap, just a 24 min documentary and trailers, though no trailer for the film. Over in Region 2 land a 2 disc ultimate edition is on it`s way!

This movie is basically a 2 hour relentless gun battle with very poor predictably cliche`d acting and a huge pro-American bias to the storytelling of the events.
Ignored is the total incompetance of the particular opperation in Somalia and in it`s place is a story of bavado of the US Army`s refusal to leave any man behind in combat (even if it means sending ten men to their death in saving one).
We sit through the sight of wave after wave of Somalians being gunned down before seeing one American die. Upon which comes the dramaticly sad music as the story stops to presumably envoke some sense of sorrow which just wasn`t there for me. I couldn`t of given a toss for these typically vaccuous young soldiers.
The saturated tone of the movie works remarkably well with the superb lighting and set design and gives a great sense of the location. The movie also thankfully avoids too many panning slow-motion shots that seem to dominate most hollywood movies these days and is generally very nicely filmed making full use of the sense of claustrophobia and impending danger that the story needs.
The acting isn`t great by any means though, but Josh Hartland and the background actors do a very commendable job.
Of special mention is Ewan Magregors` acting. His actual acting is passable but his accent is truly unbelievable. Surely Star Wars had proved that he wasn`t exactly a master at accents and you`re left dumbfounded at how with all the thousands of out of work American actors they could have chosen a scottish one who just cannot pull off a non-scottish accent for a major role.
Tom Sizemore is a big letdown aswell. A very fine actor who seems badly cast playing a walking cliche` of a character that is the relentless soldier who won`t give up without a fight.......yawn.
Overall a rather depressing mess of a movie that for all it`s good looks is letdown by a story which is pretty dull at the base of it and some mediocre to bad acting.

Feature:

I`m not a great fan of Jerry Bruckhiemer produced films but this is a great effort from him and Director Ridley Scott. The film is very enjoyable 2 hours and has some great moments with great casting (Sam Shepard, Eric Bana) and great battle sequences masterfully edited together by Pietro Scalia, who one an oscar for his troubles. Also the cinematography is brilliant (Slawomir Idziak) and the screenplay by Ken Nolan. A great war film.

Sound:

The battle scenes sound brilliant with the DD 5.1

Picture:

The picture is good.

Extras:
Not much to speak of, only a feature named `Black Hawk Down` on the set and trailers, not even for Black Hawk Down!
I was expecting a little more from Ridley Scott considering the effort he put into Alien and Gladiator.