For the most part, the unflagging sound and fury make it impossible to identify with these characters as individuals, since their primary function seems to be to serve as anonymous slabs of American fortitude.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 12, 2023

“Black Hawk Down” is an intense, visceral experience. It's gritty action one minute and deeply moving the next. But it never loses sight of its main focus – the soldiers.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 19, 2022

...arguably the best performance of Josh Hartnett's career...

| Apr 14, 2021

Not nearly as potent as one might expect from this particular director, especially with a sizable budget and resources at his disposal, and governing this impressive cast.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Sep 25, 2020

Scott pares back story, character development and moral righteousness to their bare essentials, resulting in the most striking, if not revealing, portrait of modern warfare ever filmed.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 13, 2020

The nobility and inspiration are in the action. It is in that sense a film very much in tune with America's mood: practical, resolute, fierce.

| Jun 18, 2012

I also don't know how well this 2001 drama represents the events of October 3 and 4, 1993, though I can see that it represents them in a realist vein, referring to other war movies without becoming frivolous.

| Nov 8, 2011

Black Hawk Down makes that point without preachment, in precise and pitiless imagery. And for that reason alone it takes its place on the very short list of the unforgettable movies about war and its ineradicable and immeasurable costs.

| Nov 8, 2011

It looks fantastic, not least because it boasts helicopter scenes to rival those of Apocalypse Now.

| Nov 8, 2011

Violent depiction of a risky rescue; adults only.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 2, 2011

No film from the Zeroes - hell, maybe ever - more forcefully imparted the horrors of war as thoroughly, coherently and hauntingly. Even justified wars run rampant with monstrosities, and this showed just how critical camaraderie can be in conquering them.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 25, 2010

Black Hawk Down" is a precise vision of how little war has changed in spite of America's high-tech equipment and extensive vocabulary of modern tactics.

| Original Score: B- | Aug 23, 2009

A relentless immersion in combat strikingly realized but none too pleasurable to sit through.

Full Review | Jan 2, 2009

While fine films like Saving Private Ryan depict warfare at its worst, they do not depict warfare in modernity. I cannot imagine a better representation of war, with all of its urban complexities, than Black Hawk Down.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Feb 28, 2008

Action masters Ridley Scott and Jerry Bruckheimer prove that it is possible to extend the opening twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan to two full hours. Now all they have to do is spend some of that time creating characters to care about.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 27, 2007

It would've been nice to get to know a few of the men we're meant to care about.

| Original Score: C- | Jul 23, 2007

Ambitious, sumptuously-framed and frenetic, Black Hawk Down occasionally errs on the confused, but is nonetheless a rare find of a war movie which dares to turn genre convention on its head.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 30, 2006

[Scott] does a reasonable job sketching the complicated and contradictory political context, but attempts to bring in the odd Somali perspective are grossly inadequate.

| Jun 24, 2006

Though visually awesome in its gritty portrayal of combat, the film is marred by lack of coherent or engaging story and distinguishable characters to anchor the tale.

| Original Score: B+ | Apr 26, 2006

'Black Hawk Down' jerks you around, slaps the side of your head, and kicks your butt back up to keep moving on. [Published 1-26-02]

| Original Score: A | Dec 11, 2005