The reason I’m comparing them is because they are pretty much the same movie, just take the opening battle of Saving Private Ryan and stretch it out for 2 and a half hours.
shareBHD for me, but they are 2 of my top 3 war films of all-time ...#1 being Zulu.
shareWe Were Soldiers.
shareBlack Hawk Down.
We Were Soldiers is much more average throughout and then it finishes with that bayonet charge... Throwing out any sense of authenticity that might have been there.
Black Hawk Down by a mile!
shareI love both but BHD is better.
BHD 10/10
WWS 8/10
I prefer Black Hawk Down but We Were Soldiers is a great one too. The very best war movies make war seem scary and chaotic, like Platoon did so well.
shareWe Were Soldiers was brought down by the shoddy "home front" scenes, especially when it cut right away from a giant firefight to the guy's wife vacuuming the floor. I mean come on.
Black Hawk Down feels a tad more realistic and the combat is largely more exciting. I loved the one scene in WWS when the support planes were napalming VC at point blank range but BHD has so much good combat spread throughout. Sadly not too many of the Somali's actually looked Somalian though, except the dad whose son accidentally shoots him through the door.
"We Were Soldiers was brought down by the shoddy "home front" scenes, especially when it cut right away from a giant firefight to the guy's wife vacuuming the floor. I mean come on."
Black Hawk Down was better. Basically, I think it was more exciting, especially with the pacing, music and cinematography. The aerial photography of the helicopters was first rate, Ridley Scott was clearly inspired by the air cavalry scenes in Apocalypse Now, he gets really close to those choppers and some great angles of them, it's spectacular.
We Were Soldiers has gotten a bit better over the years, but that napalm scene is too disgusting for me.