Black Hawk Down
# 5 Best of Film of 2001
This film was released in 2002. However, because it was nominated for Best Picture along with the films of 2001, I am including it that year.
Directed by Ridley Scott
Screenplay by Ken Nolan
Adapted from Mark Bowden’s work "Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War"
Starring: Josh Hartnet, Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore, Tom Shepard.
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Black Hawk Down is about the October 3rd 1993 military operation in the middle of Mogadishu, Somalia that ended up becoming the longest ground battle for U.S. troops since Vietnam. The mission was simple; the operation nothing more than a precise "in-and-out" job slated to take less than one hour to complete. But as soon as our Special Forces units were dropped on their target, all hell broke loose. The army leadership over the Somalia operation underestimated how well equipped and how large the enemy was. The first of two UH-60 Black Hawks were shot down. (Three other helicopters were also hit but they were able to make it back to base.)
In all, the forces got split up in the confusion that ensued because of the crash. The enemy, including women and children, came out to fight. What was supposed to be a 30 minute operation became a fifteen hour battle for survival.
Ridley Scott masterfully recreates the Battle of Mogadishu. He concentrates on the machinations of the battle and the bureaucratic rules of engagement and the proper lines of communication– between the command center, the surveillance helicopter overhead, and amongst the troops on the ground. Most importantly, though, he seems to accurately depict the cavalier and invincible attitude present in the behavior and preparations for this operation, not only amongst the soldiers but within the leadership.
There is an adage, maybe a military rule, that a soldier is to be prepared for any possible situation. I know for the Boy Scouts it is. However, the Rangers were not prepared. They didn’t think they needed to be. The operation was slated to take a mere thirty minutes.
But was it more than simply the time-frame of the operation? These men seemed above that because of how smoothly and successful previous operations had gone. It was a matter of time, possibly, that proper analysis, planning, preparation, and concentration fell victim to carelessness, lack of concentration and awareness, and laziness.
Black Hawk Down is a tight film, thanks to Ken Nolan’s script and the cinematography. Though there is a bit of side-stories between soldiers, Scott doesn’t really develop his characters. They come and go from sight like soldiers popping in and out from behind their security barrier. This approach does make the film more realistic to war. This approach also strengthens Scott’s intent of the film, which again is to depict the machinations of this battle from the standpoint of the soldiers and the leadership back at the command center.
Scott depicts the class structure between the soldiers and leadership. There are politics to war. A soldier can’t have any say about it though. He is a pawn to the operation. Expendable. It is his job and his duty. When the commander laid out the plans for the mission to his captains, the unit captains were present in the back. Obviously, they were there for ornamental reasons because they weren’t allowed to question or suggest changes to the plan. One of the Delta Force soldiers, who had gone undercover on the streets of Mogadishu, had reservations about the commander’s plan. Josh Hartnett’s character asked the DF soldier why he didn’t say anything. His reply was that once that first bullet flies by your head, the politics don’t matter anymore. At the end of the film, this same DF soldier decides to return to the battlefield to help find more soldiers and bring them back. He says to Hartnett that it is about the men next to you, that’s how you are able to return back to any battle.
Scott begins this film with a quote from Plato that reads "Only the dead have seen the end of war." This quote seems to be the theme of the soldier, the one out in the midst of death.
This mindset contrasts with that of the leadership. They are all about the success of the mission– the numbers, despite indications or warnings to the contrary.
The U.S. army hired a cab driver to use his car as a target. On the day of the operation, the cab driver drove his cab through the dusty, crowded, and heavily guarded streets of Mogadishu with a large black "X" on its top. He parked his cab in front of the hotel where the special forces were to drop in and abduct Aidid’s top lieutenants.
Scott shows the streets from the view of the cab driver. He’s in grave danger of being caught; he hesitates a couple of times before he gets to his destination place, making sure that his path to the target location is free from gorilla trucks that are everywhere. Scott then shows us the general at command central, biting at the bit, yelling at his people because the cab driver isn’t going as fast as he feels he should.
Indeed, Scott shows us early that the commander and his men are aloof from what was really going on in Mogadishu. Scott does focus on the primary soldiers in this battle, however, to help move the story along or to foreshadow a later event– like the scene in which a soldier bleeds to death when the medic can’t grab his protracted artery to clamp it shut. The soldiers who help hold the bleeding soldier while the medic works get covered in blood. His death is more tragic to them, because they were there at his side as he passed on.
This scene foreshadows, or sets up one of the memorable closing scenes in which the commander is walking the medical ward after the wounded and dead arrive. Passing near one of the makeshift operating tables surrounded by medics, a vein suddenly bursts. Blood spurts out onto the plastic covered pavement. The commander, aloof from the battle in his command center, grabs a doctor’s gown, kneels, and attempts to clean up the blood. All he does is smear it and then smear it more so that it covers a larger area. The look on his face, the frantic movement of his hands trying to clean up the blood invoked the image of Lady Macbeth trying to clean her hands of the blood of what she had done.
Scott creates an incredible dichotomy in the film– the one against the masses. Another effective dichotomy is the differing views of the battle– Scott contrasts the "life on the street" and "in the thick of the battle" with the safe, secure, and "out of touch" view of the general sitting back at the command center. In the battle, the soldiers were experiencing the deafening gunfire, the broken and shredded body parts, and the life-blood flowing from dying bodies. At command central, the general was simply hearing stats and numbers. Such contrasts cannot help but cause one to question the logistics behind our operations; planning and executing an operation without fully understanding and analyzing the enemy; etc.
Black Hawk Down is not a war film in the strain of Saving Private Ryan. It’s not like Platoon, The Thin Red Line, or Apocalypse Now: Redux. Black Hawk Down is unique in its near technical-like depiction of the modern war machine of the post-Reagon era, with its sterile "in-and-out" approach and military bureaucracy. However, I did see slices of humanity comparable to all of the war films mentioned above, especially with Apocalypse Now– the Rangers and Delta Force troops are dropped into an operation without finite whereabouts of the man they are supposed to apprehend. What ensues is a terrifying journey through city streets away from the target operation, simply trying to stay alive. The hunter has become the hunted.
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