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In 1998, Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan brought an end to the black-and-white war movies of old that contain sanitary, romanticised wartime imagery, and eschew the true horrors of the battlefield. This classical approach to the genre was replaced with something visceral and gritty, effectively conveying the brutal realities of wartime horror in an unflinching fashion. Following in Spielberg's footsteps and adhering to this template is 2001's Black Hawk Down. Although a big-budget Hollywood production created by blockbuster veterans (including producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Ridley Scott), Black Hawk Down offers a powerful look at modern warfare that is not easily forgotten. Loud, relentless and violent, this harrowing picture places you in the moment and allows you to experience the sensation of being caught in a frenetic combat zone with no way out and nowhere to go. Without any cheesy subplots to dilute the story's focus, Black Hawk Down is almost wall-to-wall combat, and it is utterly gripping.
Based on Mark Bowden's book of the same name, Black Hawk Down chronicles the true events that took place in Somalia in 1993. An elite group of Delta Force Soldiers and American Rangers were sent to Mogadishu, Somalia, to help end the vicious civil war of the period during which warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid was seizing international food shipments and starved several thousand Somalian people to death. In October 1993, American soldiers raided a major building in the densely-populated city with the aim of capturing Aidid's top lieutenants. However, what was supposed to be a routine, half-hour mission transformed into a prolonged 15-hour bloodbath after an extraction helicopter was shot down. Pitted against thousands of Somali militia, the American troops were left to fight for their lives.
Bowden's book about the Black Hawk Down incident is roughly 400 pages in length, yet director Ridley Scott (who was fresh off of the award-winning Gladiator) and screenwriter Ken Nolan compress the dense source material into a 140-minute film, resulting in an airtight adaptation that conveys the essential facts without any bloat. After concentrating on character introductions and dramatic growth in the first act, the film transforms into an extended action sequence. Imagine the intensity of Saving Private Ryan's opening Omaha Beach sequence extended to about 70 or 80 minutes with practically no respite. Furthermore, Black Hawk Down does not analyse what happened in Somalia or provide any political grandstanding. Rather than politics, Scott and co. were merely concerned with staging a dramatisation of the 15 hours of combat that killed a number of American soldiers and injured dozens of others. On top of this, to the credit of Scott and Nolan, the chaotic events are shown without ignoring narrative requirements or reducing dialogue to generic background noise; there is still a story here, and it's easy to become invested in the characters. The writing especially comes to life during a number of poetic monologues.
A master craftsman, Scott's depiction of combat and violence is not sugar-coated. Scott (ever the perfectionist) and cinematographer Slavomir Idziak frame the action so precisely that the illusion of being there is so real and immediate that you could be forgiven for ducking your head in a subconscious bid to avoid being hit by flying shrapnel or bullets. Indeed, the battle scenes are as accurate as a depiction of modern warfare can be, and Scott's exceptional skills as a visual storyteller help make Black Hawk Down such an unmitigated success. Furthermore, the special effects are utterly seamless, the sound design is ear-shattering, and the editing is immaculate. In fact, the film earned Academy Awards for Editing and Sound, while Scott and cinematographer Idziak received nominations. And then there's Hans Zimmer's amazing score, which is intense and harrowing, not to mention it possesses an effective African flavour to complement the visuals.
A veritable who's who of young and old male actors, Black Hawk Down benefits from an extraordinary cast. The ensemble includes such names as John Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore (who was also seen in Saving Private Ryan and Pearl Harbor), Jeremy Piven, William Fichtner, Orlando Bloom, Jason Isaacs, Tom Hardy, Matthew Marsden, and even Australian star Eric Bana (who adopts an obvious but nonetheless effective American accent). All of these actors (and beyond) do an exceptional job of forming a tight, believable unit of American soldiers. Scott and Nolan ensure that these actors are not merely interchangeable names with faces. Rather, each performer is unique and, for the most part, distinguishable during the scenes of intense combat (as much as they could possibly be without harming the momentum). Outside of the battlefield, Scott also has the excellent Sam Shepard, who espouses endless gravitas as a Major General overseeing and coordinating the raid.
Black Hawk Down is sometimes labelled as racist, and people accuse it of not doing enough justice to the Somali viewpoint. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer delivered the best rebuttal to this: the film presents a viewpoint, not every viewpoint. Additionally, while there is a degree of flag-waving and patriotism, this is counterbalanced by scenes showing that not all Somali militias are mindless savages. For instance, a scene between pilot Michael Durant (Ron Eldard) and his Somali capturer gives a face to the indigenous population, and his sentiments allow us to understand things from their perspective. Furthermore, before the fateful mission, one character even explains his respect for the Somalians. Heck, on several occasions during the movie, Scott even emphasises that the Americans perhaps do not belong in the country. For a film that is so frequently criticised as overly patriotic and racist, Black Hawk Down contains far more layers than some people care to notice.
No movie will ever be able to truly recreate the experience of being caught in combat during a war, but the makers behind Black Hawk Down do everything in their power to get us as close as a television screen will allow, bombarding viewers with an unrelenting string of violence and action. Yet it's the heart, emotion, humanity and brutal honesty that allows Black Hawk Down to escape the derogatory "action porn" label. This is the type of film that Jerry Bruckheimer's Pearl Harbor should have been but wasn't. While Black Hawk Down has its detractors, this reviewer is not among them. This is an important war movie, and it deserves to be seen at the earliest opportunity regardless of your political affiliations or opinions.
10/10
