Quentin Tarantino is one of Hollywood’s most outspoken characters, and during a recent appearance the Bret Easton Ellis Podcastthe Pulp Fiction director made a surprising revelation about his favorite films of the 21st century.
By assigning one film per director Tarantino quoted Sofia Coppola’s Lost in TranslationChristopher Nolan’s Dunkirkand 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 film Black Hawk Down.
Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, Black Hawk Down tells the story of the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, where US forces were caught in a deadly ambush while trying to extract a Somali 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 claim that Black Hawk Down is a turn-of-the-millennium “masterpiece” that certainly surprised fans.
“Look, Ridley Scott is 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 into that world. F1 is a process film, and Black Hawk Down is a process film because it brings you into a world you’ll hopefully never be a part of and shows you how it actually works.
“And the authenticity that Ridley pulled off [Black Hawk Down] was fantastic. I think it’s a great movie, so I’m lucky that I was allowed to be a part of it.”
For reference, Tarantino said he didn’t think about it at first Black Hawk Down as a masterpiece, but after several re-watches he came to appreciate the film’s technical brilliance and endurance.
“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 like I should have,” he said in the podcast episode. “Since then, I’ve seen it a few times, not a lot of times, but I think it’s a masterpiece, and one of the things I love so much about it is… it’s the only movie that actually goes after a Apocalypse now sense of purpose and visual impact and feeling.
“And I think it achieves that. It keeps up the intensity for two hours, forty-five minutes, or whatever it is, and I watched it again recently; my heart went through the entire duration of the film. It had me and never let me go, and I hadn’t seen it in a while. The directorial achievement is beyond extraordinary.”
By the way Black Hawk Down currently streaming for free on Kanopy and Hoopla in the US (UK and Australian viewers aren’t so lucky).
F1: The movie will begin streaming on Apple TV from December 12.
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