Extras: 8 deleted/alternate scenes, 6 "Essence of combat" featurettes,
7 "image and design" featurettes including Jerry Bruckheimer's on-set
photography, Filmmakers and cast biographies, Weblink.
Three Audio commentaries
Director:
Ridley Scott
(1492: Conquest of Paradise, Alien, Black Rain, Blade
Runner, G.I. Jane, Gladiator, Legend, Thelma and Louise, White Squall)
Producers:
Ridley Scott and Jerry Bruckheimer
Screenplay:
Ken Nolan
Music:
Hans Zimmer
Cast:
Staff Sgt. Matt Eversmann: Josh Hartnett
Delta Sgt. 1st Class Norm "Hoot" Hooten: Eric Bana
Delta Lt. Col. Danny McKnight: Tom Sizemore
Specialist Danny Grimes: Ewan McGregor
Major General William Garrison: Sam Shepard
Delta Sgt. 1st Class Jeff Sanderson: William Fichtner
Captain Mike Steele: Jason Isaacs
Specialist Shawn Nelson: Ewen Bremner
Specialist Lance Twombly: Thomas Hardy
Corp. Jamie Smith: Charlie Hofheimer
Staff Sgt. Ed Yurek: Thomas Guiry
Chief Warrant Officer Mike Durant: Ron Eldard
Delta Lt. Col. Gary Harrell: Zeljko Ivanek
Specialist Dale Sizemore: Matthew Marsden
Pvt. 1st Class Todd Blackburn: Orlando Bloom
2nd Lt. John Beales: Ioan Gruffudd
Black Hawk Down
is what happens during a dangerous mission in Somalia while trying to topple
dictator Mohammad Farrah Aidid, beginning with seizing his lieutenants. In this
film, based on a true story, one man is lost while touching down originally,
as a chopper tries to evade a rocket-launcher, then there's the aforementioned
Black Hawk down as another chopped takes a dive; and then a roadblock for
ground crew making their way to the crash site including Delta Lt. Col. Danny
McKnight (Tom Sizemore).
That's just the start of the mens' problems as the rescue mission goes
from bad to worse and the townsfolk wreak their vengeance on the soldiers
and their transport. However, it is a little bit slow to get going and cliched
in parts, such as when one man doesn't take his back-protection armour you
know he'll be the first to get taken from behind and that two of the soldiers
apparently left behind will make it back okay, as will the usually desk-bound
Specialist Danny Grimes (Ewan McGregor). There's also the obligatory
'bad good guy', aka Delta Lt. Col. Gary Harrell
(24's Andre Drazen,
Zeljko Ivanek), who doesn't really seem to care about the men with his
carefree behaviour.
To continue the downside, there's a few too many big name stars who are
underused, leading to there being no defining background to each of the principal
characters as there was in, say, Memphis Belle, so you don't really care who
lives and who dies. Sam Shepard doesn't have much to do but stay back
at base and look all concerned at the monitors in front of him, Josh
Hartnett is simply uncharismatic throughout and McGregor's American accent
is laughable.
What starts with promise does become repetitive rather too soon and you start
to get bored, especially with the long running time.
Columbia should be proud of a fine transfer. Like the Jet Li flick,
The One,
the picture is presented in an anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen ratio with a
colourful and crystal clear look to it, no motion artifacts at all and bold
textures throughout. Occasionally, Ridley Scott uses similar filming technique
to
Saving Private Ryan.
The sound comes in Dolby Digital 5.1, is well used for all the action scenes
and certainly something to shout about if you want to show your system off to
your friends.
The extras begins with straight-forward Filmographies for the cast and
crew on disc one, then the second contains The Essence of Combat: Making
Black Hawk Down, six featurettes about story and characters, military
orientation, on location footage, the film score, visual effects and final
thoughts. This has a total running time of 151 minutes, so even longer than
the film itself.
Then comes a further featurette about the making of the film starting with
Designing Mogadishu (13 mins), scores of prints in the Production
Design Archive, Storyboards with optional commentary, Ridleygrams
which are further storyboards, again with optional commentary, Jerry
Bruckheimer's BHD photo album (5 mins) which he talks over, various other
Photo Galleries and Title Design Explorations, again with
optional commentary. There must be everything you'd need to know about the
film here for those who are interested, which isn't really me.
Eight Deleted Scenes, all with optional commentary from Scott, are
included, such as a narrated opening, extra footage of Corrie's Matthew
Marsden looking even more determined to get that cast off his arm and
an alternative ending, even though the one they went with reminded me of that
used in the Michael J Fox comedy The Hard Way.
Finally, there are three audio commentaries on disc one. One from director
Scott and producer Jerry Bruckheimer, one from author Mark Bowden
and screenwriter Ken Nolan, plus a third from the US Special Forces
Veterans of '93.
There are 28 chapters to the film, the subtitles are in three languages
(English - with extra subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing, Dutch
and Columbia's favourite, Hindi - I say that because no other company seems to
bother, although Warner have an affinity for Arabic). Dutch is also used for
the subtitled commentaries as with some of the other extras but not a whiff of
those are in English (Why, Columbia, Why?? You always avoid English subtitles
in your extras!!). Also, the main menu features sombre music and clips from
the film.
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
