Major war movie, with few Hollywood flaws

Rating: Null/10 (25 June 2004)

An interesting thing : there are all kinds of viewpoints about this film. It means that everyone sees it with his own eyes, and every one has his own reasons to like or dislike "Black Hawk Down". Well, I most certainly liked it. To me, it's a major war movie, a worthy cousin of "Saving Private Ryan". To me, both changed the genre forever.
As many people pointed out, the most impressive aspect of "Black Hawk Down" is its realism. The war we see in that film is a bloody mess. We see scared men doing their duty, fighting for their lives. Of course, it's gory, noisy, but that's war, isn't it ? War isn't a pleasure cruise, it's not a picnic. It's about men being ripped apart, that you have to patch up the best you can (see the death scene of Cpl Jamie Smith). SPR was the first film to give us a taste of the kind of hell war is. BHD does it also. It has a visceral power. There are differences between the two movies. SPR had faded colors, and a documentary-style. BHD is very stylized, with a magnificent photography. Yet, both are equally effective. Once you've seen BHD, you don't forget it. Ridley Scott and his crew did a superb job in throwing us into the heart of the action. WWII movies like "A Bridge too far", "The longest day" are great (because they're interesting and very well directed and I still love them), but they give a Hollywood-like vision of war. They cut out the pain, the blood and the mess. The street-fighting scenes of BHD are the best I've ever seen. They give of good idea of the merciless ordeal contemporary soldiers have to face.
To me, BHD is also quite a clearsighted movie. The soldiers who were in Somalia fought because they were professionals, because they wanted to fulfill their mission, because they wanted to save their comrades. That's it. Eric Bana's character says it pretty well : "You want to know what I think ? It don't matter what I think. Once the first bullet goes past your head, politics and all that s... go right out of the window". Or : "It's all about the man next to you, that's it". There's a believable speech. It's a million years away from the silly propaganda of "We were soldiers", where the private dies on the field saying how proud he is to die for his country. Films like "We were soldiers" or "Pearl Harbor" give a glorious image of war : to me, a big lie. I also felt watching BHD that the United States were not depicted as the saviors of the world (a nice change from "Independence day", one of the worst Hollywood blockbusters). As I felt it, BHD tells about the naive aspects of the US foreign policy. The two scenes with the Somalis (Osman Atto talking with Maj-Gal Garrison and the man who talks with captured CWO Michael Durant) are well written. ("Do you think that removing Gal Aidid will have us put down our weapons ? That we will adopt American democracy ?") Soldiers on the field are paying the price (in blood) for the mistakes of their political leaders. In Somalia, they fought bravely to get themselves out of the mess. BHD also shows that immense military power isn't always a good solution. An armed militia entrenched in a city, warned by observers with cell phones (a powerful image, when the helicopters are flying over a kid with his phone) : there's enough to put heavily-armed US soldiers in jeopardy. In the light of the US problems today in Iraq, BHD had a lot of insight.
Of course, everything isn't perfect. I don't know if the reasons for US presence in Somalia are as simple as the opening captions. In the end credits, it's a bit annoying to see the names of the 19 KIA opposing a simple statement "More than 1000 Somalis were killed". The US soldiers have their names, but the Somalis can die anonymously by the hundreds. Those are Hollywood-like flaws.
Regarding the historical accuracy, I tracked down the articles by Mark Bowden. I was surprised to see how close to the facts the movie is. There are changes, of course (the main one is that Sgt Eversmann didn't spend the night in the city in the real fight), but those are only details. The spirit of the facts remains : we do understand what happened in Mogadishu.
The more I watch BHD, the better I think of it. It's excellent film making (great music by Hans Zimmer, by the way). It's a gripping war movie. It's quite gut-wrenching (you need a strong stomach to watch it), but it's believable.