Brilliant, unsparing war story

Rating: 10/10 (11 February 2002)

A city is the worst possible place to fight a war. The distances are short, the fields of view restricted, and the presence of high windows and rooftops means that an attack can come from any direction with no warning. Your long-range fire-support options are limited severely by the terrain, the main guns on your tanks are all but useless, and your armored vehicles are vulnerable to ambush in the tight, narrow streets, where an enemy can rain fire down on their weakest points. Cities are also full of people who don't want anything to do with the war, whom you have to be careful not to kill, even if your enemy displays no such compunction.
Ridley Scott's visceral, intense movie "Black Hawk Down" gives us a ground and air view of the worst urban fighting encountered by American troops since Hue City. As the movie begins, U.S. Army troops in Somalia are attempting to crash a party and grab Mohammed Farah Aidid, the warlord who ruled the port city of Mogadishu (called "the Mog" or "the 'Dish" by American grunts, who nickname everything as a matter of course, including each other). What is supposed to be a quick mission turns into a desperate battle that lasts through the night, as two Blackhawk helicopters are shot down and the security elements are surrounded by Aidid's street-gang-cum-militia, laden with AKs, RPGs, and a supply of the narcotic leaf "khat."
The movie is first and foremost a battle picture, and Scott has pared down most other details. Policy wonks are sure to be disappointed, as there is little discussion of the politics of the U.S. intervention in Somalia, or of the decisions affecting and affected by the outcome of the battle. There is no pondering about whether the mission was right or wrong, or what could have been done about Somalia. What info we get on the Somali civil war is relayed in a few short screen blurbs at the beginning. There is only a brief reference to the decision by Clinton's then-Defense Secretary Les Aspin not to authorize the use of armored forces in support. If that is the sort of thing you like, read Mark Bowden's book. The movie is more concerned with covering fire, roadblocks, and hot brass sliding down the collar of your flak jacket.
And that is all to the better. What Scott has done in foregoing big-picture issues is deliver a focused and relentless depiction of combat, complete and convincing in its details: rifle slings jury-rigged with tape and 550 cord, spray-painted sniper rigs, sweat, blood, and agony. The picture is full of small memorable moments, too many to count, and what philosophical points it makes (mostly about the sometimes heartbreaking ingenuousness of American GIs) are subtle and easily missed. There aren't a lot of director's tricks (not that you notice anyhow), including, oddly, less of the sped-up action sequences Scott loved so much in "Gladiator".
There are inherent difficulties associated with war movies; it can be difficult to tell the characters apart, or know exactly what each group is trying to accomplish, but Scott manages this aspect surprisingly well (for viewers, being ex-military or reading the book will help a great deal). The movie's look works to its advantage as well, making the city (Rabat, Morocco, in the role of Mogadishu) look dangerous in grim, spooky night and harsh, merciless daylight. The movie also contains some of the most eerily beautiful shots of helicopters in formation since "Apocalypse Now."
Battle movies tend to focus on a great many small stories. Josh Hartnett's Sgt. Eversmann is the nominal protagonist, but we do not follow him all the time, or even most of the time. As a result, we do not get a lot of insight into the particular characters. In early scenes, they are sketched rather than drawn: there's the untested kid, the office hack who wants to prove himself, tension between the straight-laced brass (Jason Isaacs, last seen as the sadistic British Dragoon in "The Patriot") and the free-wheeling special operators, etc. The characters are given brief moments in which to establish themselves, and we're off. Some of these work better than others; Hartnett's dialogue establishing him as an "idealist" is especially clumsy and unconvincing. The actors are no slouches, and there are capable performances all around, but the event is the real story here.
You could knock this movie for its lack of larger context, for not examining bigger issues, for not having deeper dialogue, but these criticisms are not exactly fair. "Black Hawk Down" is intended to give us a glimpse of something that happened, something horrible and heroic, and to give us some idea of what it was like to live through it (or not live through it). All most people remember of the battle of Mogadishu was the dead stripped American pilot, dragged by a truck while the people we thought we were helping spit on him. This movie shows us the insides of an event we thought we understood well enough, and shows us that there can be great valor even in defeat. When I was in infantry school, I knew a guy who was former Army, a member of the same Ranger unit that got trapped in Mogadishu. He was ribbed once about "losing the fight", and he exploded. Nobody understood what happened, he said. Nobody knew the real story.
Here's to you, Wickstrom. They know now.