A quite remarkable movie

Rating: Null/10 (28 January 2002)

Generally speaking, a movie should be self-contained--meaning it starts, evolves, and ends, tells a story, without need of any contextual information. You don't really need to know that much about the space program before seeing "Apollo 13" or the Civil War before seeing "Gone With The Wind." I would say that Black Hawk Down is an exception to that rule--audiences really owe it to themselves to learn a bit more about why the U.S. was in Somalia, the evolution of the mission, if only to more fully appreciate what these guys were asked to do, and what they really did; to say amazing is pitifully insufficient.
The technical aspects of this movie are almost flawless--though I'd expect some hardcore military buffs might find some missteps. The closest most Americans will ever get to battle is being cut off in traffic. But if there's a way to insert a viewer into the combat, Ridley Scott seems to have found it. The bullets flying seem to come dangerously close to you while you're sitting comfortably in a nice soft reclining movie chair.
I don't pretend to know what Scott was really after, whether it was simply an attempt to make an "antiwar" movie, a pretty low-bar to jump over. Or whether he really intended to craft what I think appears here: A wonderful mix of hard grimy and bloody reality, with an almost surreal depiction of civilization and savagery. It's not an easy mix, and one that really needs a deft hand, one which Scott pulls off rather neatly. These soldiers, America's best, actually the best of the best, are dropped into this absolutely alien world, filled with shadows and smoke, populated by strange beings with a fierce hatred and a determination to kill them. The city is full of alien aura, like the strange sight of an open air arms market on the side of the street, as if there were no difference between selling a hot dog or an AK-47 assault rifle, along with bandoliers full of ammo.
Once the bullets start flying, that's when the context is the most important, something one ought to know a little about--and it seems the writers and director expect you to, since the explanation through titles on the screen are cursory at best. As these guys are forced to claw their way out of hell, when a soldier lays dying because they're stranded in a place that makes it too dangerous to fly in a medical evacuation helicopter, one is faced with the basic question: Where was everyone? We have a $500 billion plus military with every conceivable sort of weapon, tank, airplane etc.
We could have pulverized the entire city of Mogadishu had that been the intent--something a mere several hundred American Rangers, Delta Force and the Tenth Mountain Division came darn close to doing anyway. The answer is that political considerations intruded on military necessity--one can only be outraged that the U.S. Army had to borrow armored vehicles from Pakistan to go in an get our men trapped by thousands of hostiles with guns. Typical Clinton Administration fecklessness--though there is a tiny bit of justice that the then Defense Secretary, Les Aspin, it is said, lost his job over this.
The real story here is the way these guys acted, reacted, and used their intense training to overcome the obstacles--thousands of obstacles. It is also quite striking at how much damage this relatively small force of American soldiers managed to inflict on the enemy--better than a thousand Somalis dead. They were evidently hauling away the dead for days in carts. For those who think this movie didn't have enough character development, I can only shake my head--did they think this was a sequel to "My Dinner With Andre"? This was about an intense firefight in a distant alien world, where American soldiers proved why they're the best in the world.
If there are any flaws, I can only detect two: That General Garrison is wearing sunglasses in a dimly lit room seems somewhat absurd and only done so he can dramatically rip them off--an extremely minor point, but when one is talking about a movie this good, tiny points become a bit bigger. The only other problem with the movie, is that it was too short, not easy when it clocks in at about two and a half hours. But they did leave out a number of things that would have made the movie more complete--but hey, that's what director's cuts are for and I fully expect to see one for this work, or will be most disappointed.
Though the reasons for Somalia maybe ambiguous and complex, this movie is not--it's about the good guys and the bad guys. And in this case, perhaps the movie didn't even show how bad these guys really were, as in reality, they purposely hid in crowds of women and children, and other civilians. For those who want moral ambiguity, go see tripe like "American Beauty" again, for those who want to know about the real world where soldiers kill and are killed, the ones who protect us from the savages of the world, go see this.