9 Uber-Jingoistic Movies That Are Still Legitimately Great

6) Black Hawk Down

One criticism leveled at Black Hawk Down on release was that its director Ridley Scott made America’s soldiers look heroic, while presenting the Somali combatants facing them as mere cannon fodder. It’s a legitimate concern: Scott shoots and blows up the residents of Mogadishu with the uncomplicated glee of a child playing with his GI Joes. That said, few directors have the eye for an alien environment (which Somalia is here presented as) and for action that Scott has.

Black Hawk Down might be politically and morally problematic, but my is it beautiful to look at. Shot in an almost hallucinatory style, incorporating multicolor filters and handheld elements, Black Hawk Down has become something of a template for modern war movies stylistically.

The film is also almost without peer when it comes to its exhilarating combat, with Scott retaining interest for the whole two-and-a-half-hours even though his entire film is essentially just one giant goddamn firefight.