Black Hawk Down Review

Black Hawk Down — 

Based on Mark Bowden's 1999 best selling nonfiction book, Black Hawk Down is a gritty, sometimes harrowing account of the bloody firefight between 150 Army Rangers and Delta Force commandos against literally thousands of Somali militia members in the streets of Mogadishu.

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer (The Rock, Top Gun) and director Ridley Scott (Alien, Gladiator), working from an adapted screenplay by Ken Nolan, vividly recreate the confusion and violence of modern urban warfare in stark, often very graphic detail rivaled perhaps only by Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. It is, after all, a depiction of what was, until the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the most sustained and bloody firefight in U.S. Army history since the Vietnam War.

Like Bowden's book,  focuses on the events of October 3, 1993, when a combined force of Army Rangers and Delta Force operatives were sent into a hostile section of Mogadishu, Somalia. Their mission, to capture two of warlord Mohammad Farah Aidid's top lieutenants in an attempt to weaken Aidid's grip on the war-torn capital.

Whereas the book gives a great deal of information about Somalia's post-1991 civil war, the famine that resulted from the strife between rival clans (of which Aidid's was the most dominant), and the (first) Bush Administration's intervention in the form of Operation Restore Hope, the film does this in graphic shorthand with a series of "cards" summarizing what led to the events of October 3, 1993 and with several fictionalized events which serve to introduce some of the main characters which the movie will follow throughout its 144 minutes of running time.

Obviously, a movie that is based on the experiences of 150 or so soldiers on one side and thousands of Somalis on the other can't tell the entire story in two hours and 24 minutes. Scott and Nolan were forced to use composite characters (Ewan McGregor's "Staff Sergeant Grimes" is one such composite, based in part on Johnny Stebbins, described in Bowden's book as "the [Ranger] company's chief coffee maker.") and several thematically-relevant incidents (a horrifying depiction of Aidid's militia cold-bloddedly stealing food from a Red Cross distribution center and the arrest of Osnan Atto, whose cinematic purpose is to explain Aidid's motivations to viewers, most of whom have no idea why we were in Somalia in the first place: "This is civil war. This is our war," says Atto to Major General William Garrison, played by Sam Shepard).

[Durant and Wolcott talk over the intercom as they fly past each other in their helicopters]
Durant: Six-One, this is Six-Four, go to UHF secure. I've got some bad news.
Cliff Wolcott: Limo is a word, Durant. I don't want to hear about it.
Durant: It is not a word. It's an abbreviation of a word.
Cliff Wolcott: Limo is a word in common usage. That is the key phrase in scrabble, my friend, common usage.
Durant: No! If it's not in the dictionary, it doesn't count.
Cliff Wolcott: It doesn't have to be in the dictionary!
Durant: It does have to be in the dictionary! Listen, when we get back to base, it's coming off the board.
Cliff Wolcott: You touch my limo and I'll spank you, Night Stalker. You hear me?
Durant: Yeah. Promises.

The heart of the movie, though, depicts the combined air-ground "take down" of Aidid's two lieutenants and the chain of mishaps that led to the loss of two Black Hawk transport helicopters, the capture of pilot Mike Durant (Ron Eldard of ER fame) and the grueling, often gruesome firefight that killed 1,000 Somalis and 18 U.S. soldiers.

My Viewpoint: The scope of the movie precludes any real character development. Unlike Spielberg's fictional but intimate war drama, Black Hawk Down basically lays out its characters in broad strokes: Josh Harnett (Pearl Harbor, 40 Days and 40 Nights) is the idealistic Sgt. Eversmann; McGregor (Moulin Rouge!, the Star Wars prequels) is the Ranger who has missed combat throughout most of his service and wants to fight; Orlando Bloom's (The Lord of the Rings) PFC Todd Blackburn, an eager newcomer who, as in the real fight, becomes the first casualty (he falls from the UH-60 Black Hawk while fast-roping to the street); these are all staples of men-at-war films, even if they are based on real soldiers.

Nevertheless, whether the characters are thinly drawn or not, this film is extremely well done and very respectful of the soldiers who fought, suffered and died during those horrific 18 hours in Mogadishu. Not only does Scott capture the heart of Bowden's excellent book, but - and this is a plus - by getting the assistance and active participation of the actual units involved (those are real Army Rangers doing the fast-ropes in the assault sequence, and with the exception of CGI choppers in the two shoot-down scenes, those ARE real Army Black Hawks and Little Birds)the authenticity is therefore assured.

Though the movie (and book) never made this clear, there is circumstantial evidence that Aidid (never seen in the movie, not even in archival footage) was supported by Al-Qaeda advisers. If so, Black Hawk Down documents America's first showdown with Osama Bin-Laden and his followers.

[voice-over, spoken with the credits]
Shughart: My love, stay strong and you will do well in life. I love you and my children deeply. Today and tomorrow let each day grow and grow. Keep smiling and never give up even when things get you down. So in closing my love, tonight tuck my children in bed warmly. Tell them I love them, then hug them for me and give them both a kiss goodnight for daddy.

I have this excellent - if rather sorrowful - film in two different versions.  I have the barebones DVD released in 2002 by Columbia Home Entertainment that presents the theatrical release version but no relevant extras, and the 2006 Blu-ray with the extended version and three audio commentary tracks, including one with author Mark Bowden and screenwriter Ken Nolan.