Black Hawk Down [Blu-ray]

Director: Ridley Scott

Overview

A quickly forgotten chapter in United States military history is relived in this harrowing war drama from director Ridley Scott, based on a series of Philadelphia Inquirer articles and subsequent book by reporter Mark Bowden. On October 3rd, 1993, an elite team of more than 100 Delta Force soldiers and Army Rangers, part of a larger United Nations peacekeeping force, are dropped into civil war-torn Mogadishu, Somalia, in an effort to kidnap two of local crime lord Mohamed Farah Aidid's top lieutenants. Among the team: Staff Sgt. Matt Eversmann (Josh Hartnett), Ranger Lt. Col. Danny McKnight (Tom Sizemore), the resourceful Delta Sgt. First Class Jeff Sanderson (William Fichtner), and Ranger Spec. Grimes (Ewan McGregor), a desk-bound clerk getting his first taste of live combat. When two of the mission's Black Hawk helicopters are shot down by enemy forces, the Americans -- committed to recovering every man, dead or alive -- stay in the area too long and are quickly surrounded. The ensuing firefight is a merciless 15-hour ordeal and the longest ground battle involving American soldiers since the Vietnam War. In the end, 70 soldiers are injured and 18 are dead, along with hundreds of Somalians. Black Hawk Down was voted one of the top ten films of the year by the National Board of Review prior to its limited Oscar-qualifying release. On the basis of his work in this film, co-star Eric Bana, a relatively unknown Australian actor playing Delta Sgt. First Class "Hoot" Gibson, won the lead in director Ang Lee's version of The Hulk (2003).

Product Details

Release Date:	11/14/2006
UPC:	0043396150232
Original Release:	2001
Rating:	R
Source:	Sony Pictures
Region Code:	A
Sound:	[Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround, Surround Sound]
Language:	English
Time:	2:24:00
Sales rank:	25,438

Special Features

Includes Blu-Wizard technology; Control your viewing experience; Customize the way you watch the special features; Let the Blu-Wizard navigate for you - arm the Blu-Wizard to put the content in context within the film; Audio commentaries with director Ridley Scott, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, author Mark Bowden & screenwriter Ken Nolan and U.S. special forces veterans; The essence of combat featurettes

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Josh Hartnett	Eversmann
Ewan McGregor	Grimes
Tom Sizemore	McKnight
Eric Bana	Hoot
Sam Shepard	Garrison
Ewen Bremner	Nelson
William Fichtner	Sanderson
Charlie Hofheimer	Smith
Tom Hardy	Twombly
Tom Guiry	Yurek
Jason Isaacs	Steele
Ron Eldard	Durant
Hugh Dancy	Schmid
Johnny Strong	Shughart
Gregory Sporleder	Galentine
Gabriel Casseus	Kurth
Kim Coates	Wex
Ioan Gruffudd	Beales
Danny Hoch	Pilla
?eljko Ivanek	Harrell
Glenn Morshower	Matthews
Jeremy Piven	Wolcott
Brendan Sexton III	Kowalewski
Richard Tyson	Busch
Brian Van Holt	Struecker
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau	Gordon
Steven Ford	Cribbs
Ian Virgo	Waddell
Carmine Giovinazzo	Goodale
Chris Beetem	Joyce
Tac Fitzgerald	Thomas
Matthew Marsden	Sizemore
Orlando Bloom	Blackburn
Kent Linville	Othic
Enrique Murciano	Ruiz
Michael Roof	Maddox
George Harris	Atto
Razaaq Adoti	Mo'alim
Treva Etienne	Firimbi
Abdibashir Mohamed Hersi	Somali Spy
Pavel Vokoun	Briley
Dan Woods	Fales,Fales
Ty Burrell	Wilkinson
Boyd Kestner	Goffena
Jason Hildebrandt	Jollata
Kofi Amankwah	Somali Kid
Joshua Quarcoo	Somali Kid
Johann Myers	Somali Father
Lee Geohagen	Somali Son with Gun
Jason Hildabrant	Jollata
Brendan Sexton	Actor
Hans Zimmer	Composer

Technical Credits

Ken Nolan

Mark Bowden

Steven Zaillian

Ken Nolan	Screenwriter
Jerry Bruckheimer	Producer
Tim Burke	Special Effects
Neil Corbould	Special Effects
David M.V. Jones	Special Effects
Branko Lustig	Executive Producer,Producer
Nathan McGuiness	Special Effects
Phil Neilson	Stunts
Chad Oman	Executive Producer
Ridley Scott	Producer
Mike Stenson	Executive Producer,Producer
Bonnie Timmermann	Casting
Simon West	Executive Producer
Kevin Adcock	Special Effects
Mark Bowden	Screenwriter
Benamara Azeddine	Stunts
Christopher Assells	Sound Effects
Karen Baker Landers	Sound Effects
Eddie Bydalek	Sound Effects
Terry Needham	Producer
Pat Sandston	Producer
Paul Dimmer	Special Effects
Graham Povey	Special Effects
Simon Quinn	Special Effects
Gareth Wingrove	Special Effects
Stuart Wishart	Special Effects
Alistair Anderson	Special Effects
Blondel Aidoo	Executive Producer
Emma McGuinness	Executive Producer
Cyril Kuhmholtz	Key Grip
Rob Inch	Stunts
Peter Olgyay	Stunts
Pavel Bezdek	Stunts
Roman Jankovic	Stunts
Branislav Martinak	Stunts
Louis-Marie Nyee	Stunts
Jan Petrina	Stunts
Miroslav Valka	Stunts
Eugene Collier	Stunts
Robin Shenfield	Executive Producer
Dave Appleby	Key Grip
Chuck Jeffreys	Stunts
Marek Toth	Stunts
Ales Bousi	Stunts
John Collett	Stunts
Gergely Csolle	Stunts
Michal Gr?n	Stunts
Rene Hajek	Stunts
Peter Hric	Stunts
Klaus Jindrich	Stunts
Lubomir Misak	Stunts
Jaroslav Psenicka	Stunts
Rifki Abdelghani	Key Grip
Steven Zaillian	Screenwriter
Martin Uhrovcik	Stunts
Charles Ingram	Stunts
Ratislav Kotula	Stunts
Miroslav Lhotka	Stunts
Eric Etje	Stunts
Jiri Firt	Stunts
Jan Holicek	Stunts
Tomas Peterac	Stunts
Austin Priester	Stunts
Stanislav Satko	Stunts
Jon Title	Sound/Sound Designer

Scene Index

Disc #1 -- Black Hawk Down
1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10
11. Chapter 11
12. Chapter 12
13. Chapter 13
14. Chapter 14
15. Chapter 15
16. Chapter 16

Menu

Disc #1 -- Black Hawk Down
Play Movie
Languages
Audio
English PCM 5.1 (Uncompressed)
English 5.1
French/Français 5.1
Subtitles
English
English SDH
French/Français
Spanish/Español
Portuguese/Português
Chinese
Korean
Thai
Subtitles Off
Scene Selections
Special Features
Special Feature Subtitles
Korean
Subtitles Off
Commentaries
Author Mark Bowden and Screenwriter Ken Nolan: On
Author Mark Bowden and Screenwriter Ken Nolan: Off
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Director Ridley Scott: On
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Director Ridley Scott: Off
U.S. Special Forces Veterans '93: On
U.S. Special Forces Veterans '93: Off
The Essence of Combat: Making Black Hawk Down
Play All
Getting It Right
Crash Course
Battlefield: Morocco
Hymn to the Fallen
Digital Warriors
After Action Report
Blu-Wizard

Editorial Reviews

A riveting account of a devastating battle that resulted from controversial United Nations involvement in Somalia's civil war in 1993, this war picture from director Ridley Scott displays the filmmaker's reliable eye for startling visuals and effective translation of words into pictures. Whether he's employing map-like aerial views of a re-created Mogadishu in order to help the viewer understand how the action's unfolding or using documentary film techniques to reinforce the story's "you are there" realism, Scott's eclectic style synchronizes perfectly with his subject matter's brutal, mindless violence and moral equivocation. The sole drawback of this strategy is that it minimizes the individual soldiers' personal stories, challenging the audience to remain emotionally invested in a group of characters that struggle to move front and center. It's human beings on both sides, after all, that are being fed to the sausage grinder of battle here, but the suffering and bloodshed are not handled with the same emotional skill as the physical action. This seems to be a conscious choice on the part of the filmmakers, who have created a piece that is far more about the logistics of a chain of tragic events than a heartfelt plea for understanding or even an antiwar statement. In a fictitious drama, such a creative decision would be a fatal one, but projects such as the television miniseries Band of Brothers (2001) demonstrate that identifiable characters and emotional beats are expendable (to a degree) in the service of telling an important fact-based story in as accurate a fashion as possible. Black Hawk Down is not the best war movie ever made, but it is one of 2001's best and one of the most truthful about what war is like in the ultra-political, high-tech here and now.