Black Hawk Down «««½
R, 144m. 2001
Cast & Credits: Josh Hartnett (SSgt. Matt Eversmann), Ewan McGregor (Spec. John Grimes), Jason Isaacs (Capt. Mike Steele), Tom Sizemore (Lt. Col. Danny McKnight), William Fichtner (Sfc. Jeff Sanderson) Eric Bana (Sfc. Norm "Hoot" Gibson), Sam Shepard (Maj. Gen William F. Garrison), Ewen Bremner (Spec. Shawn Nelson), Tom Hardy (Spec. Lance Twombly), Ron Eldard (CWO Michael Durant). Screenplay by Ken Nolan based on the book by Mark Bowden.Directed by Ridley Scott.
I felt a lot like Sam Sheperd’s Major General William F. Garrison watching Black Hawk Down. Garrison was ordered by military advisers from Washington to have his marines airdropped on the town of Mogadishu, Somalia on Oct. 3, 1993. Their mission was to capture two top lieutenants working for a Somali warlord named Mohamed Farah Aidid who was starving the nation’s people.
The military exercise, as told by one of the marine soldiers in the film, was supposed to last an hour. They were to go in, get what they came for and get out.
The mission instead lasted two days with marine soldiers attempting unsuccessfully to stand their ground against thousands of heavily armed Somalis. When the battle was over, 18 American servicemen were dead and more than 70 were injured. It was a cross between Custer’s last stand with the Indians and the Alamo.
America’s involvement in Somalia came through the United Nations and was supposed to be a peacekeeping mission to supply the nation’s citizens with food. Not everyone shared the same sentiment, however. Like Vietnam, where some believed America shouldn’t have been there, a Somali businessman believed to be working for Aidid tells Garrison early in the film, “You shouldn’t have come here. This is civil war. It’s our war.”
Garrison and his top commanders watched the disaster unfold from a group of video monitors at a base near Mogadishu. The surveillance was supplied by Delta Force commandos in helicopters who flew above the city who not only monitored what routes the marines should take on the ground but fed back information to home base as to how bad the situation was getting.
I felt like Garrison but instead of watching the carnage and mayhem unfold from video monitors and radio transmissions, I was seeing it all displayed on the big screen inside a dark theater. You can toss aside any graphically, bloody sequences of servicemen being operated on in makeshift medical units in movies like Apocalypse Now (1979), Full Metal Jacket (1987) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989).
Like Steven Spielberg who spared the audience no expense what it was like for American servicemen to take that beach in Normandy in Saving Private Ryan (1998), director Ridley Scott (Gladiator - 2000, Hannibal - 2001) gives us a horrific no-holds-barred recreation of what Hell was really like for those marines that fateful October afternoon.
If you think all you’re going to see in Black Hawk Down is just a shot of a soldier’s thumb bloodily hanging from a piece of skin after being hit by a bullet, guess again.
The film shows just how serious these men are when it comes to embracing the possibility some of them may not be coming back even for a mission believed to be this easy. At one point, a marine hands his friend a sealed farewell note to be given to his girlfriend stateside should he not come back. While another calls long distance to tell his wife he loves her.
The picture features a number of known stars but doesn’t focus on just one person. We meet soldiers like Sgt. Matt Eversmann played by Josh Hartnett (Pearl Harbor – 1991), who sees the reason for their being in Somalia is to help the natives. Grimes (Ewan McGregor), a cleric who complains about how all he does for the men is make coffee and has never seen combat. He probably changes his opinion the moment he airdrops in the middle of all the shooting.
Tom Sizemore’s Lt. Col. Danny McKnight isn’t afraid to let his superiors know he doesn’t care for their surveillance from the air while he and his men are on the ground dodging gunfire. Finally pilot Michael Durant (Ron Eldard), an American pilot captured by Somalis during the fighting who was later released.
The battle is grippingly told and for much of the time, I found myself clinging to the armrests in hopes that our helicopters would be able to dodge rockets fired from armed Somalis. That wasn’t to be.
The film in a sense is like one of those two hour war documentaries you might see on PBS or the History channel that offers a play-by-play account of how things went from bad to worse. Because I see it more as a documentary, it was hard to shed any emotion for the servicemen lost.
Instead, Black Hawk Down just reawakens my political feelings about how America should not always be sticking its neck out for every country that’s in trouble. There is a part of me that is a lot like that one soldier in the film who doesn’t think they should be in Somalia but doesn’t necessarily voice his opinions out loud.
©1/30/02
R, 144m. 2001
Cast & Credits: Josh Hartnett (SSgt. Matt Eversmann), Ewan McGregor (Spec. John Grimes), Jason Isaacs (Capt. Mike Steele), Tom Sizemore (Lt. Col. Danny McKnight), William Fichtner (Sfc. Jeff Sanderson) Eric Bana (Sfc. Norm "Hoot" Gibson), Sam Shepard (Maj. Gen William F. Garrison), Ewen Bremner (Spec. Shawn Nelson), Tom Hardy (Spec. Lance Twombly), Ron Eldard (CWO Michael Durant). Screenplay by Ken Nolan based on the book by Mark Bowden.Directed by Ridley Scott.
The military exercise, as told by one of the marine soldiers in the film, was supposed to last an hour. They were to go in, get what they came for and get out.
The mission instead lasted two days with marine soldiers attempting unsuccessfully to stand their ground against thousands of heavily armed Somalis. When the battle was over, 18 American servicemen were dead and more than 70 were injured. It was a cross between Custer’s last stand with the Indians and the Alamo.
America’s involvement in Somalia came through the United Nations and was supposed to be a peacekeeping mission to supply the nation’s citizens with food. Not everyone shared the same sentiment, however. Like Vietnam, where some believed America shouldn’t have been there, a Somali businessman believed to be working for Aidid tells Garrison early in the film, “You shouldn’t have come here. This is civil war. It’s our war.”
Garrison and his top commanders watched the disaster unfold from a group of video monitors at a base near Mogadishu. The surveillance was supplied by Delta Force commandos in helicopters who flew above the city who not only monitored what routes the marines should take on the ground but fed back information to home base as to how bad the situation was getting.
I felt like Garrison but instead of watching the carnage and mayhem unfold from video monitors and radio transmissions, I was seeing it all displayed on the big screen inside a dark theater. You can toss aside any graphically, bloody sequences of servicemen being operated on in makeshift medical units in movies like Apocalypse Now (1979), Full Metal Jacket (1987) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989).
Like Steven Spielberg who spared the audience no expense what it was like for American servicemen to take that beach in Normandy in Saving Private Ryan (1998), director Ridley Scott (Gladiator - 2000, Hannibal - 2001) gives us a horrific no-holds-barred recreation of what Hell was really like for those marines that fateful October afternoon.
If you think all you’re going to see in Black Hawk Down is just a shot of a soldier’s thumb bloodily hanging from a piece of skin after being hit by a bullet, guess again.
The film shows just how serious these men are when it comes to embracing the possibility some of them may not be coming back even for a mission believed to be this easy. At one point, a marine hands his friend a sealed farewell note to be given to his girlfriend stateside should he not come back. While another calls long distance to tell his wife he loves her.
The picture features a number of known stars but doesn’t focus on just one person. We meet soldiers like Sgt. Matt Eversmann played by Josh Hartnett (Pearl Harbor – 1991), who sees the reason for their being in Somalia is to help the natives. Grimes (Ewan McGregor), a cleric who complains about how all he does for the men is make coffee and has never seen combat. He probably changes his opinion the moment he airdrops in the middle of all the shooting.
Tom Sizemore’s Lt. Col. Danny McKnight isn’t afraid to let his superiors know he doesn’t care for their surveillance from the air while he and his men are on the ground dodging gunfire. Finally pilot Michael Durant (Ron Eldard), an American pilot captured by Somalis during the fighting who was later released.
The battle is grippingly told and for much of the time, I found myself clinging to the armrests in hopes that our helicopters would be able to dodge rockets fired from armed Somalis. That wasn’t to be.
The film in a sense is like one of those two hour war documentaries you might see on PBS or the History channel that offers a play-by-play account of how things went from bad to worse. Because I see it more as a documentary, it was hard to shed any emotion for the servicemen lost.
Instead, Black Hawk Down just reawakens my political feelings about how America should not always be sticking its neck out for every country that’s in trouble. There is a part of me that is a lot like that one soldier in the film who doesn’t think they should be in Somalia but doesn’t necessarily voice his opinions out loud.
©1/30/02
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