(Rated R, 2 hrs. 23 mins.) In a land of “beautiful beaches, beautiful sun – it’s almost a nice place to visit” says Josh Hartnett, if it weren’t for war. Hartnett plays Sgt. Eversmann stepping out of his boyish role of last summer’s “Pearl Harbor” and into the shoes of a man. Black Hawk Down is based on the inspiring, true heroic account of a group of elite U.S. soldiers sent to Mogadishu, Somalia in 1993 as part of a U.N. peacekeeping operation gone wrong. Their mission: to abduct several top lieutenants of a Somalian warlord as part of a strategy to quell the civil war that is tearing away at the country. For us, it’s the biggest firefight since Vietnam. Yet, in “Platoon” while Oliver Stone focuses on the men’s emotional makeup during Vietnam, director Ridley Scott of this movie, never really allows us to get close to these men too busy dodging bullets, explosives and body parts as they scream orders to one another for over two hours. We never know these guys as individuals. Instead, we only see their pain in learning that war is an ugly place and that good-hearted soldiers have no intentions of harming innocent women and children. But, the spooky resemblance to present day Afghanistan will depress the audience already inundated in real life war. This movie, while to be respected, is one sad atrocity after another multiplied by producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s slick staged visuals and pumped up soundtrack. But unlike “Armageddon” or “Con Air” there is no soft spot or room for a story love-line except for their love of heroism.
