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Black Hawk Down
What price
benevolence?
The first thirty minutes of Black Hawk Down place the audience in familiar territory. Interspersed with the African countryside are the standard introductory bravado shots and buddy sequences we've come to expect from this genre. A veteran myself (of many a war flick), I usually use this time to detachedly study each face, listen for each name and rank (handy information once the big battle scenes ensue) and surmise each character's chance of survival.
But in Black Hawk Down, there is a deep and growing sense of dread that pervades these scenes. Most of the young, brashly confident, square-jawed soldiers are real, as is the horrifying battle, which left 18 of them dead.
The early 1990's seemed to be the start of a new era -- with the Soviet empire recently collapsed, how better to use American might than in a multi-national humanitarian effort of historic proportions? The presence of U.S. troops made it possible for the United Nations to quell the massive starvation of Somalia and keep at bay the menace of Somali warlords, namely Mohamed Farrah Aidid. But each time U.S. troops began to pull out, Aidid would reassert his strength. So a plan was hatched to storm one of Aidid's strongholds in the city of Mogadishu and extract many of his top lieutenants and henchmen using elite U.S. soldiers.
In a script adapted by Ken Nolan from the Mark Bowden bestseller, hints of apprehension abound. Yet all goes as planned until a Black Hawk helicopter is crippled by RPG fire and crash lands into the city streets, where a seething mob of civilian soldiers is waiting, armed to the teeth.
Director Ridley Scott (Gladiator, Thelma and Louise, Alien), notable for his visual style, teams here with producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Pearl Harbor, Gone in 60 Seconds, The Rock) master of the action genre. The combination here superbly lends itself to the subject matter. The film is terrifying in its ability to convey both the mayhem of a mission gone awry and the iron determination of those involved to leave none of the dead or wounded behind.
With Josh Hartnet (lately of Pearl Harbor fame), Sam Shepard, Tom Sizemore and Ewan McGregor effectively used to enhance rather than dominate the story, Black Hawk Down is riveting and powerful in its ability to raise unsettling questions too often left to others to ponder: What is heroism? What compels those who have escaped death to face it again? What is our country's role in a world without a comparable superpower? Mogadishu may have given us some of the answers at a price. (Black Hawk Down, Columbia Pictures Production, rated R, opens 1/18/02)
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