Wahey! All right, "Black Hawk Down" just finished screening on TV. And what the hell, there were parts in it which I never saw on the VCD!!

First indication that I got of that was when at one of the convoy's stops, Othic gets out of the vehicle and sees a hand-- yes, a hand-- lying on the ground, and after a second of thought, he picks it up and puts it in the back of his gear pack. To return to its owner later, I guess. But I noticed that hey, I'd never seen that before!! And damnit, I've watched the disc at least ten times; there's no way I'd have missed that!

Then later, when Smith got shot and they were trying to put pressure on his wound, when they let up the pressure as they were switching people, they actually SHOWED the blood spurting out of the artery and onto all the other guy's faces.

In the disc, all you hear is this ripping/spurting sound, and next thing you know, everyone's faces are more or less half-covered in blood, so you kinda figure out what the sound is by the second time you watch it.

Then when Schmidt's trying to get the bullet out of Smith's leg, they also showed what was really going on down there; meaning surgical kinda shots where you could see all the hands digging and rooting in all that pink, pulsing flesh, trying to root out the elusive bullet. In the disc, all you get are shots of the guys and shots from a level slightly lower than the table than Smith is on, such that you can see that yes, Schmidt has his arm IN Smith's leg up to his elbow, but not more than that.

This confuses me, really. So Singapore's Board of Censors decided that it was all right to show spurting blood and really gory scenes of people rooting around in live human flesh, but they cut out the shot of when Pilla is shot in the neck and his blood spurts all over the screen?

Oh, and lastly, they actually showed how the pilot's legs were trapped when they were dismantling the cockpit to get the bodies out. I have no idea what's so gory about that that it wasn't even included in the disc, but well.

All this is really starting to make me wish that I'd gone to see it in the cinema when it was first released. But then again, I think I mightn't have been old enough yet, then. :P This was probably rated NC-16 or something. :P

And yes, they DID end up censoring about a quarter of the dialogue; coicidentally, these were also some of the funnier (albeit darkly humorous) parts of the movie. Like the scene where Twombly and Nelson run into Yurek on a deserted street, and Twombly fires on Yurek (for some reason which I still can't really fathom), but he doesn't hit him. The ensuing dialogue is really quite funny, but leave out the lines with the expletives, and it turns out quite dry, as you can see:

(Censored parts in italics; where entire lines are italicised, the whole shot was just cut out.)


Yurek: (taking cover behind a vehicle and looking through the windows to see who's firing on him; he yells when he sees the shooters.) RANGERS?!

Twombly: (from his and Nelson's position behind another vehicle further up the street, yells back) WHO?!

Yurek: It's Yurek! You f***ing assholes!

Twombly: (Motions to Nelson, telling him that they've fired on one of their own; Nelson spits and curses: "F***!"; Twombly turns and yells back to Yurek, who's still crouching behind the other vehicle) Dude, we almost f***ing shot you! Well, come to us!

Yurek: F*** you, come to me!


Lol. In the end, they meet halfway against the side of a building, and Twombly apologises for opening fire on Yurek. :D

Also, they left out one of my favourite shots in the whole movie.

I say "left out" because the scene was a completely non-violent one, but given the times that we're in right now, that scene might be a sensitive one.

The scene is one of daybreak over the capital city of Mogadishu, where we see that the only building in the city which can actually profess to be a building and not a half-standing pile of rubble, is the mosque. The mosque is left intact simply because Islam is basically the only thing kept sacred in the city.

From an aerial shot, we see a man, standing on the balcony of the mosque, a loudhailer perched on the parapet in front of him; then he picks up the receiver and begins the Muslim prayer.

Down on the beach, in the light of a dim, still-dawning day, two men kneel and follow the prayer; they're quite some distance apart-- the first is near the camera, while the second is slightly out of focus about ten metres away.

And here's the most beautiful and most saddening thing about this shot which I love: when the first man finishes his prayer and gets up to leave, he picks up his gun.

Strange, isn't it, that we can pray for absolution and be ready to kill immediately after. I suppose it was like that in the Crusades as well. People do strange things in the name of religion sometimes.