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Review: Black Hawk Down
The movie, directed by Ridley Scott, stars Josh Hartnett, Sam Shepard and Tom Sizemore as various Army Rangers and Delta Force soldiers who found themselves under seige by thousands of enraged Somalians in a l993 battle that was the longest sustained firefight involving American troops since the Vietnam War. The soldiers were sent into Mogadishu, the Somalian capital, to capture a warlord and some of his aides.
The mission goes bad when one Black Hawk helicopter, then a second, are shot down by rocket-grenade firing members of a Somalia militia. The Army Ranger motto is "Leave No Man Behind," and they aren't kidding. Even though they captured the people they were looking for, the Rangers and Delta Force soldiers wouldn't leave the area until the bodies were recovered from the Black Hawks, even after it was clear the pilots were dead. The crash scenes brought tens of thousands of heavily-armed militia running, and the U.S. soldiers spend a horrific night under seige. Even though the warlord's aides were captured, what most Americans saw the next day on TV were horrifying images of U.S. soldiers' bodies being dragged naked through Somalian streets by joyous throngs.
The U.S. was initially involved in Somalia to stop the country's warlords from looting humanitarian aid meant for victims of one of the century's worst famines. But the American role there drifted into something else without much public consciousness or, apparently, strategic thinking. Somalia, along with the Bosnian conflicts, taught the American military once again that soldiers shouldn't be sent anywhere unless goals are clearly defined and there is a willingness to pursue the conflict to some conclusion even if there are casualties. Many military analysts say this shadow persisted over the U.S. Armed Forces until September 11.
The American Somalia mission -- clear at first -- degenerated into policing and warlord-busting, and nobody in or outside of the film can really explain why 19 U.S. soldiers gave up their lives. The U.S. mission there was abruptly ended by President Clinton two weeks after the bloody confrontation involving some of America's most elite troopers. More than 1,000 Somalians were killed in the brutal firefight.
Like the best-selling non-fiction book by Mark Bowden on which the movie was based, the film simply tells this astonishing, sad and grisly story. It's almost completely unadorned by speechifying, peripheral love interests and character development, or other Hollywood BS.
As was the case in HBO's Band of Brothers, there is no single star around which the movie flows, apart perhaps from Hartnett, who plays a Ranger sergeant promoted hours before the battle. The shooting is so fast and furious that most of the U.S. soldiers do blend together. There's so much blood, dust and darkness it's almost impossible to tell many apart for much of the movie. Some find that a weakness, but it seemed a strength to me. There is some truly mind-boggling -- and according to Bowden's book -- real heroism in this story, and it is genuinely moving. The Delta Force members in particular come across almost as almost mythic cartoon superheroes, but according to Bowden and the soldiers present their heroism and, in some cases, suicidal sacrifice, really did happen.
It's impossible to view this movie without thinking of Afghanistan, if for no other reason than the two conflicts seem so jarringly different. Somalia threw U.S. soldiers into a civil quagmire without any sense of what victory even meant. In some ways, our involvement in Afghanistan has a clear moral justification and purpose, but is a Drone War, conducted mostly by airplanes with the help of some small numbers of ground forces. In a way, Afghanistan suggests that the kind of heroism, sacrifice and bloody combat depicted in Black Hawk Down is a thing of the past. Today, a few members of Delta force would probably be squirreled away in some of Mogadishu's apartment buildings, directing laser-guided bombs.
This movie is visually rich, capturing the surreal atmosphere of Somalia in 1993, and the almost numbing carnage, bombing and confusion. The action sequences are very well done and harrowing. Some of the critics are complaining that the audience will feel as if it were under seige. I sure did. But to me, that was the beauty of the film.
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Is that this movie will unfortunately knock off LOTR from the #1 spot...
Jon finish me off please. You can do it by writing another movie review. Please accomodate.
2872058
Take a look at this post, maybe you'll realize that your country isn't the beautiful defenser of liberty and justice that you think is is.
Someone please teach Katz to type the numeral "1" when he means one, and not the lowercase "l". You're not using a typewriter anymore, dude!
it amazes me that an idiot such as yourself posts articles on slashdot.
do us all a favor and stfu...
i can't think of anything more painful than reading one of your articles.
ugh...
you suck.
Somalia was a nasty place (it is a little better now). There were a series of special interests (the warlords) that the US totally underestimated. The film apparently does not do the situation justice.
Although the film is apparently up on Morpheus other reviews suggest that it isn't worth the download.
Yes, you are absolutely correct. Every time the US involves the Army outside its borders, it's for oil. Afghanistan? Oil. Somalia? Oil. Serbia? Vietnam? Germany? Oil. Heck, it's a national obsession that affects civilians, too -- when I was travelling for business did I bring back Colombian coffee, Chilean wine, Bahamanian rum? No! It was Colombian oil, Chilean oil, and sweet, sweet Bahamanian oil! We'll get it all, I tell you! We'll drain Lake Michigan, and use it to store beautiful black oil! Oil will run from our taps! Every lawn will be slick and dark and luxurious!! Our children will suckle from vast wells!! Our streets will be flaming canals!!! And around the world, people will hail the United States of Oil!
my precious, my precious...
Please vote to promote frontal lobotomy on John Katz
Hi, John. What happened to Junis? Still downloading Baywatch-DivX in Afghanistan? And what about the interview you promised to ask him about? You fucking liar! Have you no shame?
The time to 'purge' the hard left 'entryism' of /. is long overdue.
I suggest you seek an appointment in the future Ministry of Truth.
Danny Schechter, are you Jewish?
If so, how's the "just" killing in Israel?
Katz has this wonderful naive view of how he should be reviewing movies. He does his reviews basically as a generic person with no interest in the movie before he slaps down his 8$ at the theatre and his interest in the movie really ends when the credits roll. BlackHawkDown was a "hey wow, lots of explosions and the americans won in the end!" movie to Katz. I don't think it once crossed his mind that the movie may have misrepresented the facts, and as a journalist he didn't really have any concern for going and doing any factchecking on what he saw in the theatre. Sorry Katz, but that is only going to work if you're writing for TV Guide or somethine equally moronic. This is SLASHDOT, home of the LIBERAL pseudointellectual. You're going to have to give us some eye catching background info that convinces us your writing is cool. Anyhow, thanks for letting us all know the explosions and mood music were effective at entertaining the simple-minded.
Read "The Sick Mind of Noam Chomsky" to answer your question.
I'd go on, but Chomsky is the person who said that "No one, except a few madmen, feared communist aggression in the 50's". His theories ignore the existence of communist aggression in the latter half of the 20th century. Check out some of David Horowitz's writings for a thorough debunking of Chomsky's views. He knows Chomsky's ilk well because he used to be one of them.