Quentin Tarantino is one of Hollywood’s most outspoken characters, and during a recent appearance on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, the Pulp Fiction director made a surprise revelation about his favorite movies of the 21st century.
Allocating one movie per director, Tarantino cited Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, and Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead among his top 10 films of the past two decades (so far). And at the top of the pile? Ridley Scott’s 2001 war flick Black Hawk Down.
Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, Black Hawk Down recounts the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993, which saw US forces caught up in a deadly ambush during an attempt to extract a Somalian warlord's top lieutenant. The film was well-reviewed at the time of its release and won two Oscars at the 2002 Academy Awards (Best Film Editing and Best Sound), but Tarantino’s assertion that Black Hawk Down is a “masterwork” of the millennium certainly caught fans by surprise.
“Look, Ridley Scott's a brilliant director, and it's a great movie,” Bruckheimer told me. “It captures the essence of what that period was like, and takes you inside that world. F1 is a process film, and Black Hawk Down is a process film, because it puts you inside a world you'll never be a part of, hopefully, and shows you how it actually works.
“And the authenticity that Ridley pulled off in [Black Hawk Down] was amazing. I think it's a terrific movie, so I’m fortunate that I got to be a part of it.”
For reference, Tarantino said he initially didn’t think of Black Hawk Down as a masterpiece, but after several rewatches, he came to appreciate the film’s technical brilliance and staying power.
"I liked it when I first saw it, but I actually think it was so intense that it stopped working for me, and I didn’t carry it with me the way that I should’ve," he said on the podcast episode. "Since then, I’ve seen it a couple of times, not a bunch of times, but I think it’s a masterwork, and one of the things I love so much about it is... this is the only movie that actually goes completely for an Apocalypse Now sense of purpose and visual effect and feeling.
“And I think it achieves it. It keeps up the intensity for two hours, forty-five minutes, or whatever it is, and I watched it again recently; my heart was going through the entire runtime of the movie. It had me and never let me go, and I hadn’t seen it in a while. The feat of direction is beyond extraordinary."
Incidentally, Black Hawk Down is currently streaming for free on Kanopy and Hoopla in the US (viewers in the UK and Australia aren’t so lucky).
F1: The Movie begins streaming on Apple TV from December 12.
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