Top 10 War Movies
Black Hawk Down (2001, Ridley Scott) — Somalian mission
Most war movies use battle scenes the way musicals use production numbers: several are sprinkled throughout the picture to stir the viewer's pulse. Not so with Black Hawk Down. After a brief introduction of the main characters, the picture is all fighting, all the time. It's a 2-hour-plus gunfight at the O.K. Corral, except that the weapons are blazing on the streets of Mogadishu, where all lives are expendable. (President Clinton quickly ended the mission, which was more or less humanitarian.) Scott was criticized for focusing on the white Americans, for turning the Africans into an indistinguishable blur of grenade fodder and for allowing the implication that the deaths of 18 U.S. soldiers held greater import than the 300,000 Somalians who died at the regime's hand before the military arrived. But if you want to feel the heat and stink of war, to know how desperation kindles gallantry and barbarism, see Black Hawk Down.