None But The Valiant!

Rating: 10/10 (2 January 2010)

The exciting Ridley Scott combat actioneer "Black Hawk Down" ranks as one of the best military movies to come out of Hollywood. Not only does this gritty, engrossing reenactment of real-life gallantry surpass the patriotic, blood-drenched June 6th, 1944 Normandy landing that director Steven Spielberg depicted in "Saving Private Ryan" (1998), but "Black Hawk Down" also shuns any of those hollow, sentimental, gung-ho John Wayne-style heroics from World War II era movies. From its anti-heroic opening quote by Plato that observes: "Only the dead have seen the end of war," "Black Hawk Down unfolds as a stark, searing tribute to the valor of elite American troops caught up in deadliest firefight since Vietnam. Not since director Cy Endfield make the memorable 1964 Michael Caine epic "Zulu" about a brave handful of out-numbered British soldiers holding off hordes of savage, bloodthirsty Zulu warriors in 1879 has a movie plunged its protagonists in such a suicidal situation. Rarely has a film shown its heroes trapped as tragically between a rock and a hard place as "Black Hawk Down." Lensed on location in Morocco by "Proof of Life" cinematographer Slawomir Idziak with Pentagon cooperation, this unforgettable, non-fiction narrative about an ill-fated 1993 raid by 123 elite U.S. soldiers into Mogadishu, Somalia, captured the blood, sweat, and fear that Philadelphia Inquirer staff reporter Mark Bowden immortalized in his riveting 1998 bestseller. War qualifies as nothing but Hell in the adaptation of the Bowden narrative by freshman scenarist Ken Nolan who sticks closely to the truth in this blow-by-blow chronicle of a good mission gone bad. In 1992, famine swept Somalia, and several sadistic, heavily-armed warlords clashed over control of their East African country while they deprived without mercy their own starving citizens of United Nations food shipments. No sooner had a U.N. peacekeeping force, including 20-thousand U.S. Marines, restored law and order than factional fighting erupted again. General Muhammad Farah Aidid emerged as the notorious culprit-at-large. U.S. Army Rangers and Team Delta Force flew in to arrest both Aidid and his lieutenants.
Although the American forces never nabbed Aidid, they located two of his subordinates. In October 1993, U.S. General William Garrison (Sam Sheppard of "Swordfish") dispatched the Delta Force to snatch the Aidid underlings in an urban ghetto right under the noses of thousands of trigger-happy, pugnacious Somalia militia doped-up and itching for action. U.S. Army Rangers ropes in from four Black Hawk helicopters to provide cover for the Delta Force troops as they piled their prisoners into a convoy of Humvees. Practically everything went off like clockwork until waves of Somalias surprised our guys and wielded RPGs, deadly grenade-launching weapons, to blast two choppers out of the sky. A perfect mission which should have lasted a mere 30 minutes bogged down into a 15-hour fiasco as undermanned American troops fought tooth-and-nail to recover their fallen comrades and clear out.
Director Ridley Scott, whose credits include "Alien," "G.I. Jane," and "Gladiator," pulls few punches in this harrowing, high-octane, bullet-riddle, adrenalin-laced opus. If the sight of guts, gore, and mutilated flesh makes you feel queasy, avoid this nerve-racking exercise in the horror of combat. Scott endows "Black Hawk Down" with a raw-edged, documentary flavor that his gifted cast of little-known actors and up-and-coming stars, such as "Pearl Harbor" heartthrob Josh Hartnell and Ewan McGregor of "Star Wars: Episode One," enhance with their believable, low-key performances.