Eric Bana on making Black Hawk Down ahead of 4K UHD rerelease

“Black Hawk Down,” the last war movie filmed before the September 11, is still considered one of the great war movies.The film has been restored for release in 4K UHD, and to mark the occasion, Eric Bana sat down with Military.com to discuss what it was like to make and its lasting impact on its stars.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.“Black Hawk Down,” the classic combat movie about the 1993 battle in Mogadishu, Somalia, has just been restored for a spectacular new 4K UHD home video release.Eric Bana, who plays Sgt. 1st Class Norm “Hoot” Gibson in the movie, joined us for a conversation about the film's lasting legacy.Director Ridley Scott's “Black Hawk Down” got a limited release at the tail end of 2001 and went into nationwide release in early 2002. That makes it the first great war movie released after 9/11 and the last great war movie filmed before the attacks.The movie won Oscars for Best Editing and Best Sound Mixing. It was also the most recent of Scott's three Best Director nominations after “Thelma & Louise” and “Gladiator.” It's hard to believe that Ridley's never won an Academy Award. There was also a nomination for Sławomir Idziak's cinematography.In 1993, US troops participated in a UN task force that aimed to restore order in Mogadishu and remove a government that was killing its own citizens. What was intended as a simple raid and capture of warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid went wrong when Somali fighters shot down two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters and the extraction became a rescue mission.Over the course of the battle, 18 American soldiers were killed and 73 were wounded. Images of American bodies dragged behind pickup trucks dominated CNN (we only had CNN then) and provided a stark contrast to what civilians perceived as the cakewalk of the first Gulf War.Journalist Mark Bowden set out to tell the story of the mission, and his book became the source material for “Black Hawk Down.”This 4K release is on par with the outstanding upgrades done for Ridley Scott's other movies “Alien,” “Blade Runner” and “Gladiator.” If you've invested in a 4K UHD TV, these titles make a strong case for getting a 4K disc player to take full advantage of the technology. If I ran a home theater store, this would be the disk I'd use when trying to sell you one of those $10,000 TV sets.As with so many Ridley Scott movies, there's an Extended Cut of the movie that's eight minutes longer than the theatrical cut. Unlike a lot of those other recuts, this one doesn't change much about the movie. It's exclusively on the 4K disc. The release is also loaded with bonus content, and there's a complete list of the extras at the bottom of this post.The movie features a great cast, a showcase for the next generation of actors. Sam Shepard, Tom Sizemore and Ewan McGregor were already well-known, but Josh Hartnett, Tom Hardy, Orlando Bloom, Ioan Gruffudd, Hugh Dancy, Ty Burrell, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Eric Bana had their first high-profile roles in this film.Eric Bana's performance as Hoot in “Black Hawk Down” led to the lead as Bruce Banner in Ang Lee's “Hulk.” He's had a long and successful career since, highlighted by roles in “Lone Survivor,” “Munich,” “Star Trek,” “The Finest Hours” and, most recently, the acclaimed TV series “Dirty John.”We talked about the making of “Black Hawk Down,” why it resonates with veterans and how he contributed to the movie's most famous lines.