Good dude flick.

Rating: Null/10 (30 November 2009)

I've written some pretty lousy reviews of late, even on films I liked. I dunno... maybe I was feeling rotten, or it was that cold I've been trying to kick for the last week. Anyways, here's a film I'm good with. A good old fashioned shoot-em-up flick.
A little history; Somalia was an independent kingdom until the European Age of colonialism. Prior to and during the second World War it was an Italian holding. The extreme racism that characterized fascist Europe did not penetrate deeply into Italian Somalia. As such you get some very mixed and interesting ancestries on the proverbial Horn of Africa.
The Italians eventually left. And with them went any semblance of civilization. Tribal ties in that area of the world are the only political force recognized. Well, that and an AK47. So, when there's a drought and the crops and cattle die, who do you blame? Why, logically your neighbors and whatever multitude of tribal deities abound.
So it is with Somalia, and so it is that the population has overburdened the ecosystem, which, without modern farming techniques, cannot sustain the population levels. When you mix that with an uneducated people you get a disaster brewing.
"Black Hawk Down" shows one of the many episodes of military intervention that the United States has had to venture upon, and usually with mixed results. The episode regards the planned ambush and downing of a US Black Hawk helo, and the combat that ensued from that.
Ridley Scott puts his masterful commercial-film-making style to the story , to create something that's actually worth looking at once, possibly twice. Shot in North Africa (Morocco I believe), Scott craftily reverses angles to make the North Western African coast appear to be its polar opposite.
Cinematography is a must see in this. There's a lot of detail and mood manipulation via color extraction and enhancement from scene to scene. The acting is solid, though the drama seems somewhat overplayed. The story is told mostly from an accurate account written and transcribed from the meticulously researched book of the same name by Scott Bowden. Bowden actually went to Somalia to ask questions and look at the locations of the battle. A thing this writer would not do. Kudos to him.
If I had a gripe with this film, it would be the story telling avenue that Ridley Scott took. And that is to meld a couple of the characters together to keep the story moving. It's not really his fault as such. It's a common enough device to more compactly transcribe some real world event onto the big screen. For me, I would've preferred the approach used in "TORA TORA TORA". Keeping things real, so to speak.
So, why were we in Somalia? Initially to feed the population that was starved because of crop failure brought on by drought. The result of that was the creation of a "Mad Max" like world where armed gangs roamed the streets, wielding power by stealing UN Food shipments. George Herbert Walker Bush ordered the military to go in and escort/guard the UN food shipments. Clinton came into office, and decides to try to solve the Somalia dilemma by pursuing a policy of "nation building". Hence our forces are beefed up, and we're suddenly trying to go after the various warlords. Aidid, the most powerful one, sees an opportunity to demonize the US so he can eventually reign over Somalia by generating support for himself. Things spiraled out of control from there.
I actually remember the day this episode happened. And scratching my head as to what was going on down there. The media reported that an engagement had taken place, showed that horrible footage of the dead US soldiers (rangers?) being dragged through the streets, but then nothing more. And no one, and I mean absolutely no one, in the mainstream news audience got anymore information than that.
Circa 1996 or 1995 Frontline did an investigation, and aired piece that ran one and one half hours on the disaster that was "The Battle in Mogadishu". Again, I was there when it premiered (though I may have the air date year wrong), and was very curious to learn the truth of what happened. Incredible.
Some thing left out of Ridley Scotts film; there were two Apache gunships also involved in the fighting providing support, as well as a SEAL team who were with the holed up rangers and delta operators.
All in all it's an extremely violent film, but one that's pretty true to the facts and spirit of what happened in Africa some 20 years ago. I can't watch it more than perhaps once a year. The special edition DVD has the Frontline piece I mentioned, though it's been trimmed down to an hour in length. The one comment that's been edited, but that I'll never forget, was a large bald serviceman smiling at the Frontline camera crew and shaking his head as he told them his thoughts during the firefight "Nobody, not my friends, not my family, not my school teachers, knows what's happening to me right now."