Black Hawk Down is a 2001 war film that is streaming on Netflix and stars Tom Hardy, Ewan McGregor, Josh Hartnett and Jason Isaacs and has been hailed as one of the greatest war movies ever made

Movie buffs have hailed a Netflix feature as one of the ‘greatest war films ever’, boasting a stellar cast and a near-perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Released in 2001, “Black Hawk Down” marked Tom Hardy’s first significant movie role, sharing the screen with other big names such as Ewan McGregor, Jason Isaacs, William Fichtner, and the film’s lead, Josh Hartnett. The film revisits the lesser-known Battle of Mogadishu, seen by some as “one of the most notorious battles in U.S. military history.”

The motion picture powerfully recounts the events depicted in the 1999 non-fiction book, which captures the chaos following the downing of a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter. It encapsulates the fierce firefight that took place in October 1993 between American troops and Somali National Alliance forces, resulting in the deaths of 18 U.S. soldiers.

Josh Hartnett, who was highly sought-after in the late ’90s and early ’00s, intentionally retreated from the Hollywood scene. He pursued roles in indie movies and recognised the need to protect his “sanity”. In a personal exchange with actress Julia Stiles, Hartnett disclosed: “I never really lived in LA. Even when we were making ‘O’, I was in Minnesota, New York, nowhere, because I was living from set to set. I drove my car down from Minnesota to shoot ‘O’ and then drove back after that. But the choice to step back from the industry had more to do with just plain sanity.”

However, he recently experienced an acting revival with his role as Ernest Lawrence in the Oscar-winning blockbuster, Oppenheimer. In Black Hawk Down, Hartnett portrays war hero Staff Sergeant Matthew Eversmann, who was deployed to Somalia as part of a UN peacekeeping mission.

The film chronicles the experiences of him and 160 elite US soldiers tasked with capturing two corrupt Somali leaders, only to find themselves significantly outgunned and outnumbered. The “intense” film is helmed by Oscar-winning producer and director Ridley Scott, renowned for some of the biggest box office hits such as Alien, Gladiator, The Martian, and Blade Runner.

Not forgetting, the film bagged two Academy Awards for Best Film Editing and Best Sound, although it missed out on major category wins to none other than Lord of the Rings. Rotten Tomatoes is awash with glowing reviews for the Netflix movie, with one viewer hailing it as “one of the greatest films/war films of all time”.

Another praised the film as their “favourite movie of all time”. One critic noted: “Black Hawk Down” is an intense, visceral experience. It’s gritty action one minute and deeply moving the next. But it never loses sight of its main focus – the soldiers. A big fan of Black Hawk Down expressed high praise, deeming it “one of the greatest and one of my favourite military war films of all time. They explained, “I know a lot of it is action, but that’s the whole point – the battle scenes were astonishing, visually stunning and jaw-dropping, and it also has the best green screen effects I’ve seen.

However, not everyone shares the same enthusiasm. A Rotten Tomatoes reviewer voiced disappointment, writing: “Not nearly as potent as one might expect from this particular director, especially with a sizable budget and resources at his disposal, and governing this impressive cast. While another critic called out the film for inaccuracies in comparison to the book and the true events it depicted. Conversely, a different viewer simply stated: “This film made me sick. I mean that as the highest compliment.”