FLASHBACK REVIEW: I Am Sam / Black Hawk Down

Originally published March 14, 2002

Courtesy of New Line

With the Academy Awards less than two weeks away, most nominated movies are still playing in theaters. Two of the most popular are I Am Sam and Black Hawk Down. The first is nominated for acting and the second for other reasons.

I Am Sam stars Sean Penn as Sam Dawson, a mentally retarded man who must raise his daughter alone after the mother leaves. Sam, a Beatles fan, names her Lucy, after one of their songs. Sam’s neighbor helps him take care of Lucy. The movie jumps ahead to Lucy at seven years old.

By now, Sam and Lucy are on the same level mentally. Lucy doesn’t want to be smarter than Sam so she stops trying in school. Social Services decide that Lucy should live with a foster family. Sam’s friends, also mentally retarded, tell him that in the movies people always get lawyers. They look in the Yellow Pages and pick the law firm with the longest name.

Sam meets with a lawyer named Rita (Michelle Pfeiffer). At first she gives him the run-around but eventually takes his case for free to impress her co-workers. From this point, I Am Sam becomes a typical melodramatic courtroom movie.
Despite the so-so story the actors are wonderful, especially Sean Penn. He received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor (the movie’s only nomination) with his amazing performance. Pfeiffer is also good as the nasty attorney who ultimately realizes what is important in life.

The most surprising performance is from Dakota Fanning, the young girl who plays Lucy. Most child actors seem like they’re just instructed to be cute but Fanning truly acts. She has received numerous awards for her performance but was overlooked for an Oscar nomination. It’s a shame because she is just as good as Penn.
 

Courtesy of Sony

Black Hawk Down, based on the book by Mark Bowden, is good for opposite reasons. It’s great because of its story. It has an all-star cast including Josh Hartnett and Ewan McGregor. It is based on true events involving soldiers stationed in Somalia in 1993. The country is involved in civil war and the United States is there to try to stop it.

In what is supposed to be a routine mission, soldiers in the air and on the ground are to enter enemy territory, capture leaders of the militia, and bring them back to the base. The mission is supposed to last 30 minutes. It doesn’t turn out that way.

Once in the city, everything goes wrong. Two Black Hawk helicopters are shot down. The soldiers have to fight the city’s militia and citizens too. At headquarters, officials quickly turn the operation into a rescue mission. Other people are sent in to get the endangered soldiers out of the city.

Ridley Scott, director of Black Hawk Down, cares more about the story than about making the actors look good. He doesn’t seem to care about character development as much as making sure the event is portrayed accurately. The Oscar nominations the film has received also show this. It is nominated for Cinematography, Directing, Film Editing and Sound.

It has often been compared to We Were Soldiers. There are several similarities: both are based on fact and involve soldiers fighting a war that isn’t theirs. They both graphically depict the horrors of combat.

But We Were Soldiers seems more interested in its star. Mel Gibson gets most of the screen time. No matter how intense the battles are the audience can always find Gibson. Black Hawk Down isn’t like that. The movie has a frantic pace and switches to different characters many times. It is often hard to tell the characters apart, which gives it more of a realistic feel. The two movies are similar where subject matter is concerned but Black Hawk Down is the superior film.

I Am Sam is rated PG-13 for language. Black Hawk Down is rated R for graphic war violence and language.