"There will always be killing, you see."

--Somali militia man to Black Hawk pilot Michael Durant

"Your most disgraceful case was in Somalia. . . . When tens of your soldiers were killed in minor battles and one American pilot was dragged in the streets of Mogadishu you left the area carrying disappointment, humiliation, defeat and your dead with you....You have been disgraced by Allah and you withdrew. The extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear."

-- Osama bin Laden, 1996, "Declaration of War Against the Americans"


We now know that many of the Somali militiamen who attacked the U.S. Army troops during the 1993 battle of Mogadishu were trained and funded by Osama bin Laden, so I suppose he speaks with some measure of authority on the issue.

However, if director Ridley Scott's magnificent real-life thriller "Black Hawk Down" is any indication, bin Laden was both right and wrong in his assessment. We may have been losing the war against terrorism (at least at that time), but we most certainly won the battle.

123 Army Rangers and elite Delta Force commandos went out on a mission in the capital city of Mogadishu on October 3, 1993 to capture two top advisors of Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Addid, a repulsive character who was actively starving his own people. The troops were expecting to grab the bad guys and be back at HQ by dinnertime. Suddenly attacked from all sides by literally thousands of Somalis armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, they wound up on the run, sometimes hopelessly lost, with the added task of finding and rescuing the crews of two Black Hawk helicopters that had been shot down. Despite massively overwhelming odds, the American soldiers sustained only 19 casualties while killing as many as 1,000 Somalis before making it back to their home base. Now, every American life lost was precious to us, while the Somalis probably saw their comrades the same way (or maybe not - many Somalis fought while using unarmed women and children as human shields, effectively using our own virtue of protecting the innocent against us), so I don't make that comparison lightly. I only do it to illustrate what our guys were up against, and how most of them came out of it alive due to superior technology, training and state of mind.

Unquestionably the finest war picture since 1998's "Saving Private Ryan", and the best movie ever made about the Special Forces and close-quarters combat, "Black Hawk Down" relates this incident mostly through the eyes of Sgt. Eversmann (Josh Hartnett, who makes a much bigger impression here than in 2001's soap-opera epic "Pearl Harbor"), a thoughtful, uncertain soldier who aquires command of one squad of Rangers after the regular squad leader falls ill. Things go wrong right from the beginning of the mission. One of his men, Private Blackburn (Orlando Bloom), is severely injured while attempting to rappel from the helicopter, and an emergency evacuation becomes necessary. In short order, two Black Hawks are shot from the sky by Somalis with RPGs. Ridley Scott, a master film craftsman who's on the roll of his life after "Gladiator" and "Hannibal", deftly manages the tricky task of making the action both confusing and clear at the same time. The soldiers sometimes don't know where they are, but they almost always know what they have to do.

Although Eversmann is ultimately the film's central character (Hartnett seems to get most of the screen time), it's definitely an ensemble cast, and it performs together superbly. The on-site CO is grizzled veteran Lt. Colonel McKnight (Tom Sizemore, graduating from his Sergeant's role in "Ryan"), who throws himself into the Herculean effort of keeping himself and his boys alive while trying to maintain an unforgivably bizarre line of communications with his HQ commander, Maj. General Garrison (Sam Shepard). Also aboard are William Fichtner as Delta Sgt. Howe, who almost comes to blows with Captain Steele (Jason Issacs) in the heat of battle.

The one character whose named was changed for the film (as far as I know) is Company Clerk Grimes (Ewan McGregor, nearly unrecognizable in an Army buzzcut), whose real-life alter ego, John Stebbins, basically spent his time making coffee and typing reports until he was called to action on this mission and ended up with a Silver Star for bravery under fire. For some reason, he also seemed to be a magnet for RPG fire. I suspect the name change was due to Stebbins's current situation - he's now serving a prison sentence for rape. Turning him into a fictional composite is, I suppose, understandable.

The film is certainly entertaining to watch, but it's also a physically and emotionally exhausting experience. Remember the 25-minute D-Day opening of "Saving Private Ryan"? That was certainly something to burn into your memory forever, but this, friend, is hyperwar. After a succinct set-up on the circumstances in Somalia that lasts about a half an hour, the film throws you into the fire. The remaining two hours are made up of, essentially, one long battle sequence. The gunfire is so intense in spots that it seems as if not getting shot is equivalent to running in a rainstorm without getting wet. There are a multitude of gushing wounds and severed body parts (one soldier is actually blown in half by a grenade). In the movie's most difficult-to-watch segment, a medic has assistants hold a wounded private down while he forces his hand inside the boy's crotch, trying to find a hemorrhaging femoral artery.

The most moving sequence focuses on the second crash site, where two Delta Force snipers, Gary Gordon and Randy Shugart (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Johnny Strong), readily volunteer to hold off the Somali mob - all by themselves - and protect the crash's only survivor, pilot Michael Durant (Ron Eldard), until the cavalry arrives. Gordon and Shugart are eventually over-run, killed and paraded through the streets by the same people they were theoretically there to help (both snipers were posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for their bravery).

Some have criticized the lack of depth in the characters in the story. I think that to dwell too much on that element would actually have made the film less than what it is. This is the story of one battle, as seen by the Americans who fought it. There is no need - or justification - for any extemporaneous conversations, theatrical revelations or love triangles of the type that ruined "Titanic" and "Pearl Harbor". The actors, however, attack their roles with Army-style gusto, establishing their characters sufficiently to create sympathy when they're hurt or killed. It also helps to have their names scrawled conveniently - if inaccurately - on their helmets. In addition, if sometimes you can't tell between some of the soldiers, I think that was intentional on Ridley Scott's part. In the Army, your individuality is stripped away and you are made part of a unit. I believe this was Scott's message: that for 100 American soldiers to escape while killing 1,000 of the enemy and sustaining minimal casualties requires teamwork above all else. So much for "An Army Of One".

Another lesson the movie teaches is the politically incorrect virtue of brute force. We were only able to beat the Japanese, the Iraqis, the Germans (twice) and the Taliban with dreadful weapons and the unbending will to use them. You come away with the feeling that talking your way out of trouble, rather than shooting your way out, is sometimes a little over-rated.

Maybe the film's greatest accomplishment is that it's able to humanize the special soldiers it depicts. After Vietnam, Hollywood produced a number of films that characterized soldiers as either psychotics or as helpless, pathetic victims of the military-industrial complex. The Reagan era saw the pendulum swing all the way to the other side, picturing men in uniform as bulletproof superheroes with iron fists and wooden personalities. As audiences have become more sophisticated over the last decade, the market for gritty realism in war dramas has increased. Partly because of that, the characters in the films tend to seem more real (and in this case, of course, they are). As Eversmann says about his soldiers at the film's end: "Nobody asks to be a hero; it sometimes just works out that way." When I see members of the armed forces today, I look at their faces first, not their uniforms.



(The movie is based on reporter Mark Bowden's terrific book, which was published in 1998. I recommend it highly.)





Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older