| Field | Details |
|---|---|
| Movie Name | BLACK HAWK DOWN (2001) |
| Director | Ridley Scott |
| Writer | Ken Nolan |
| Lead Actor | Josh Hartnett |
| Cast | Josh Hartnett; Ewan McGregor; Eric Bana; Tom Sizemore; William Fichtner; Sam Shepard; Ewen Bremner; Jason Isaacs; Tom Hardy; Orlando Bloom |
| Genre | Action, Drama, War, History |
| Release Date | December 28, 2001 (United States) |
| Duration | 2h 24m |
| Budget | $92 million |
| Language | English |
| IMDB Rating | 7.7 / 10 |
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BLACK HAWK DOWN:
Movies are showing more of the horrific detail of modern ground war (wounds, blood, body parts, the sensation of being under fire from high-speed missiles of fearsome destructive power). Straight infantry combat had never before been created for film with the realism of both violence and military choreography seen in Saving Private Ryan and HBO’s Band of Brothers.
Now Ridley Scott, already a director of instant classics such as Blade Runner, Thelma and Louise and Gladiator, re-creates the 1993 skirmish in Mogadishu, Somalia. It was an American nightmare in which 18 U.S. soldiers died during this African mission that began out of humanitarian motives (feed starving Somalis) and ended when local warlords didn’t like losing control and decided to resist.
The United States backed out eventually because it had no political permission to take casualties or clean up Somalia. Scott’s movie centers on the pivotal event a coordinated ground-helicopter incursion by elite forces into the unfriendly center of the city to capture key opposition leaders. Going in is harder than blowing them up, as in Afghanistan. A chopper is shot down, and most of the disaster results from risky, improvised efforts at rescue while hostile fighters converge and innocent civilians flee.
Overall, it’s over two hours of a powerful but grim film. The expedition fights bravely with fragments of success but mostly it’s Americans who are in pain and dying. Agonizing human moments include a chopper pilot taken prisoner, scrambling to save photos of his loved ones amid the chaos; GIs frantically trying to help a medic find and hold a slippery artery inside a screaming, badly wounded comrade.
The main political message is probably that you don’t go into war, even in the Third World, lightly. Morally, that translates into humility. (Sadly, war also requires that you may need to leave some dead and wounded comrades behind.) It’s a deadly serious business, but it may have been worse to attempt nothing. As one GI character puts it, noting that 300,000 Somalis were starving at the time,. A tough combat movie, for mature audiences.
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