Blackhawk Down

Saw this on the Whistler ski trip.  Part of the deal at the condo we stayed at was they had some tapes they would lend us.  I was surfing and chatting during most of it, so I was pretty distracted.

I had heard from teammates that the movie was very intense.  They said that once the action started it didn't let up, except one fifteen minute break.

My mom had told me about a Discovery Channel show she'd seen about the incident.   Apparently that show spent a lot of time explaining the people and loyalties involved.  It gave a lot of background and gave a context for the raid and the reaction to it.  I wonder if they put that on the DVD.

In the movie, the US soldiers seemed very detached from the populace.  It was never made clear what life was like there, neither for the soldiers nor for the populace themselves.

The movie also seemed to want to portray the chain of command.  There were several times the people in contact had to make a request to a circling helicopter, which then passed the request on to the base.  It's been too long since I saw it, but I remember a few times the requests seemed reasonable, but were refused for reasons I wasn't always able to figure out.

Similarly, it was unclear to me how many troops were available and where they were located around the city.

Partly because I was distracted, I had a very hard time figuring out the layout of the battle.  There were about three battle zones, and I couldn't really tell how far apart they were.  That made it hard to keep track of who was where and how things connected.

The movie didn't show anything about the local inhabitants.  No organization, no differentiation between gangs, nothing.  They were just faceless hordes.

I've tried to catch it a coupla times since then on cable, but still haven't had a chance to watch it uninterrupted.  Someday I need to do that.  As it is, it didn't hit me as hard as it appeared to hit my teammates.

On my brother's Total Movie Value Scale, Rental.  Pretty intense.  Maybe a bit superficial on the background.

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