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Black Hawk Down
Columbia Pictures / Sony Pictures Entertainment

Black Hawk Down reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 74 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
7.6 out of 10
based on 33 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 91 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: R for intense, realistic, graphic war violence, and for language

Starring Josh Hartnett, Eric Bana, Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore, Jeremy Piven, Sam Shepard, and Ron Eldard

Director Ridley Scott's adaptation of the true war story of the attack on a group of U.S. special forces sent into Somalia in 1993 to destabilize the government and bring food and humanitarian aid to the starving population.


GENRE(S): War  
WRITTEN BY: Mark Bowden (book)
Ken Nolan
 
DIRECTED BY: Ridley Scott  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: June 11, 2002 
Video: June 11, 2002 
Theatrical: December 28, 2001 
RUNNING TIME: 144 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: USA 

Ridley Scott recieved a 2002 Oscar nomination for Best Director.

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
His is a triumph of pure filmmaking, a pitiless, unrelenting, no-excuses war movie so thoroughly convincing it's frequently difficult to believe it is a staged re-creation.
Read Full Review
100
San Francisco Chronicle Bob Graham
It is an exceptional accomplishment.
Read Full Review
100
USA Today Mike Clark
Black Hawk turns nightmare into great cinema.
Read Full Review
100
New Times (L.A.) Luke Y. Thompson
Doesn't just kick your ass. It pummels your entire body; it leaves you trembling.
Read Full Review
100
Time Richard Schickel
It takes its place on the very short list of the unforgettable movies about war and its ineradicable and immeasurable costs.
100
Portland Oregonian Staff (Not credited)
Scott superbly re-creates the sense of individuals facing astounding odds, with barely a few minutes' respite over a 12-hour battle.
Read Full Review
100
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Films like this are more useful than gung-ho capers like "Behind Enemy Lines." They help audiences understand and sympathize with the actual experiences of combat troops, instead of trivializing them into entertainments.
Read Full Review
100
The New Yorker David Denby
I've rarely seen so selfless a collection of performances and, in a war movie, so general an absence of rhetoric or guff. [25 & 31 Dec 2001, p. 127]
91
Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
Rivets our interest for its entire lengthy running time. And it does this without any of the usual war movie clichés, false heroics, barracks-humor nonsense or grandstanding absurdities.
Read Full Review
90
Washington Post Stephen Hunter
The next worst thing to being there. That's how real it feels.
Read Full Review
90
Rolling Stone Peter Travers
A personal best for producer Jerry Bruckheimer, a triumph for Scott and a war film of prodigious power. You will be shaken.
Read Full Review
89
Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Absolutely harrowing, shocking in its sudden revelatory immediacy, and very, very well done, Black Hawk Down is one of the best depictions of the outright lunacy inherent to battle I have ever seen.
Read Full Review
88
New York Daily News Jack Mathews
What we need to remember, what Black Hawk Down reminds us, is that there are no safe missions when you're chasing bad guys. Especially when you have to chase them down a hole.
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88
Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
An overwhelmingly tactile experience. Scott brings you so close into the action, the grit and smoke and blood seem to spill off the screen and into your head.
88
ReelViews James Berardinelli
One hell of a ride. For better or for worse, it will leave you stunned and reeling.
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88
Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
It's one of the most ferociously convincing physical re-creations of warfare ever put on screen.
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80
Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector
Though passionate, doesn't pity or flatter the rank and file.
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80
Newsweek David Ansen
As brilliantly shot as it is brutally single-minded, this is a war movie shorn of all its usual accouterments: the battle is the plot.
80
Washington Post Desson Thomson
You're drawn in, like it or not. You can't get away from the immediacy. Or the feeling that you're getting sucked in, too.
Read Full Review
75
Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Black Hawk Down, in the end, is a docudrama. But it's sensationally well done, and it opens up a battlefield that needed to be documented.
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75
New York Post Jonathan Foreman
A beautifully filmed, scrupulously authentic but strangely evasive exercise in combat ultra-realism.
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75
Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
Throw in the music -- a wall-to-wall whorl of Eastern modal dirges, thumping rock and Celtic-y skirl -- and you've got a veritable cinematic rhapsody of war.
67
Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Even an audience moved to tender patriotism might wonder how Scott, a proven master of ''Gladiator''-size visual showmanship, could have bombed away the personality of every man fighting until he's left with nothing more than pure combat.
Read Full Review
63
Boston Globe Jay Carr
Character is almost wholly subordinated to a blast-furnace rendering of the hell into which they're dumped. Seldom will you see so many US military body parts strewn around a movie screen.
60
Film Threat Tim Merrill
It’s a true endurance test, far too grim to be considered exciting, but not really informative enough to enlighten us about the effect of our presence in Somalia in 1993.
Read Full Review
60
Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
An endless battle scene in search of a movie. It's every bit as harrowing -- and also every bit as pointless and misguided -- as the botched military mission it depicts.
Read Full Review
60
LA Weekly Manohla Dargis
In the end, neither the appealing cast -- nor the force of Scott's stunning imagery is enough to make us understand why these men died.
Read Full Review
60
TV Guide Ken Fox
No doubt captures some of the horror and the chaos of the actual situation, but it makes for a loud, often confusing, and always bloody two and a half hours.
Read Full Review
50
Variety Todd McCarthy
Goes down like stiff medicine, leaving one feeling exhausted relief when it's finally over.
Read Full Review
50
The New York Times A.O. Scott
Sitting through the accomplished but meaningless Black Hawk Down is like being trapped in an action film version of "Groundhog Day," condemned to sit through the same carnage over and over.
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40
Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Functions mainly as an action extravaganza, and a numbingly depersonalized one at that.
40
Village Voice J. Hoberman
It's a Jerry Bruckheimer art film, perhaps the most extravagantly aestheticized combat movie ever made.
Read Full Review
25
Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Perhaps they truly believe war is an inescapable aspect of human life. If so, why make movies that rub our faces in its horror? If artists have no antidote to war's evil or insight into the suffering it brings, their motive in depicting it must be merely to sensationalize its terrors and make money from the morbid fascination it holds for audiences. We deserve better.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 7.6 (out of 10) based on 91 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Thatem W. gave it a10:
This is one of the few movies that I can watch over and over. Of course it is too powerful to watch all the time. It is a great movie about an insane war. Recommend it to anyone wanting to see another side of things.

Martins H. gave it a3:
The movie was announced as an anti-war-movie, but its only a detailed story of a mission that fails, in which american soldiers are finally depicted as heroes once more. Supported by the US Army... No real critcism, no background information about the war that would allow a deeper questioning of the mission - thats not enough. This movie is not more than a show. The show as such is realistically done, but it's just as flat as its characters.

David W. gave it a10:
It truly is one of the best war movies of all time. It depicts the modern warfare very well. Since the Gulf War we haven't been fighting militaries, we have been fighting militias and civilians with weapons. It's sad but true. This movie is without a doubt a 10!

Oliver W. gave it a4:
Outstanding production quality. Profoundly empty story. It's a two hour battle sequence with at least a dozen main characters, none of whom are likable.

D. gave it a10:
One of the best war movies of all time. Right up there with Saving Privet Ryan.

Keith G. gave it a10:
Pretty much what MILL said but it was there fault they got shot we wanted to help them and they sent militia after us. If you join the Army or some kind of armed service then dont expect people to not shoot at you. RIP to Delta MSG. Gary Gordon and Delta SFC Randy Shughart who sacraficed there lives for Michael Durant they where true American Heros.

Jay gave it a10:
This is truly an astonishing movie. The best war movie I have ever seen.

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