Video review: Seeing the real chaos of war

RIDING shotgun through an infamously botched 1993 military mission in Somalia, Ridley Scott’s dusty, bloody, sometimes agonising BLACK HAWK DOWN provides a realistic and cinematically-astute taste of war, without the kind of nerve-racking hyper-authenticity that makes you feel as if you might get shot while watching it.

Watching this film, you can feel the chaos and peril that erupted around the Delta Force and Army Ranger units sent into Mogadishu on October 3, 1993, to arrest a notorious warlord.

Two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down in what was supposed to be a 30-minute operation, and several dozen soldiers were surrounded by an angry, heavily armed militia that kept US troops pinned down for 18 hours in a unceasing guerrilla gun battle that eventually claimed hundreds of Somalian lives, killed 18 Americans and wounded 73 more.

As demonstrated in Gladiator and GI Jane, Scott has a talent for creating a polished, photogenic vision of battle that still gets across the blood and guts of it all.

This skill is even more in evidence In Black Hawk Down, in which he employs amazingly crisp and handsome aerial cinematography, and a distinctive colour palette of turbulent cobalt blue, night-visiony green and incendiary orange to artistically ratchet up the imposing ambiance of battle commotion.

This stylishness does overshadow the film’s military grit, but Black Hawk Down is more of mood film anyway.

What it captures, and captures well are the collective sensory perceptions of its soldiers — abject frustration, dedication to duty, dismay and fear, grief, a desire for retribution, and above all, heroism in the face of impossible odds.

Scott does not try to form attachments to the film’s fictionalised characters. Many of them die - some in gasping panics as medics try to cauterise their horrible wounds - but none of them are holding pictures of girlfriends back home or calling out for their moms.

If the film has a lead, it would be a young sergeant played by Josh Hartnett, who gets most of the movie’s character development. He’s cast as the army’s collective conscience — an idealist who genuinely believes in the Somalian mission of humanitarian aide.

“We can either help, or we can sit back and watch them destroy themselves on CNN,” he preaches before their ill-fated raid.

4/5

Ewan McGregor gets to toy with a little personality as well, as a frustrated desk jockey who is happy to see combat when one team is a man short. “I have a rare and mysterious skill that keeps me from going on missions,” he quips. “I can type.”

OUTSIDE THE LAW: Julie Cosgrove (Cynthia Rothrock) is a beautiful woman and who is also a highly skilled secret agent under the hire of the US government.

Her fiancé is also happens to be an agent and she’s always prepared for the worst. But when he was gunned down in a dangerous assignment, she was still unable to continue.

As such, Julie left the world of agents and secret missions behind her, opting to begin a new life and try to start over again.

The memories of the tragic past would always haunt her, but perhaps a fresh start could help her to make some new memories, happy ones instead of depressing ones.

But she winds up with some locals who happen to be involved with the mafia in Florida. She is friends with these men, however, so when one of them is killed, her repressed killer instinct is sent screaming to the surface and she is determined to even the score.

On the run with the mafia and the government on her trail, can Julie’s skills be enough to help her survive?

This is a low-budget action film with some serious flaws, but thanks to the presence of Rothrock, it remains watchable.

Rothrock is able to showcase some of her talents in Outside the Law, but she is never cut loose totally and this because of the film’s limited budget, which lessens the scope of the action sequences.

Action, 15. 2/5