PFS Film Review
Black Hawk Down

 

Black Hawk DownThe civil war in Somalia in the early 1990s caused a shortage of food that caused the death of some 300,000 persons. In an attempt to stop the famine, the United Nations dispatched food aid, but forces loyal to a local warlord, Mohammed Farah Aidid monopolized distribution in the port city of Mogadishu to secure Aidid in the position of ruler of Somalia. Accordingly, UN military forces were assigned to establish law and order, which had broken down due to the scramble for food. When a unit from Pakistan tried to intervene in 1993, some 300 lives were lost, and the Pakistanis retreated, having failed to accomplish the mission. An American military force, led by Major General William E. Garrison (played by Sam Shepard), then attempted in early October unsuccessfully to kidnap Aidid’s most able lieutenants without engaging the Pakistanis for possible back-up assistance. The events of the American military intervention in Somalia, as detailed in the nonfiction book Black Hawk Down by eyewitness journalist Mark Bowden, have now been brought to the screen in a feature film of the same title directed by Ridley Scott; a documentary based on the same book, Massacre in Mogadishu, was aired on public television earlier in the year. The focus in the feature film is on the heroism of American troops, notably Sergeant Matt Eversmann (played by Josh Hartnett) in perhaps the most ineptly conceived and executed military mission in the history of the United States since the Battle of the Alamo in 1836. Most of the film consists of the actual fighting, with much blood and gunfire (using Morocco as the film location). Filmviewers will particularly observe how the American force lacked proper intelligence about the enemy, which fought with much skill and firepower. After a Ranger slipped from a helicopter to the ground, the task of retrieving him as a wounded soldier was hampered because no perimeter in Aidid’s section of Mogadishu had been secured as a zone for retreat. Then, the force assigned on the ground to destroy Aidid’s headquarters was pinned down by Aidid’s troops on the rooftops; when two American helicopters were shot down, more American casualties piled up without an evacuation plan or route despite the retreat order from General Garrison that serves as the film’s tagline, "Let no man behind." There are several titles at the end of the film. One tells filmviewers that only nineteen Americans died, though the number of wounded (73) was not stated. Another title notes that the first two posthumous Congressional Medals of Honor since Vietnam were awarded to two of the soldiers who did not survive. President Bill Clinton’s withdrawal of all American military from Somalia is also noted. Yet another title notes that General Garrison, who accepted responsibility for the disaster, retired one day after Aidid was finally assassinated. The excessive length and incredible authenticity of the bloody battle in the film could possibly be viewed as bearing an anti-war message, since the film begins with a quote from Plato, "Only the dead have seen the end of war." But Black Hawk Down is instead a testament to the bravery and patriotism of American soldiers (some of whom performed stunts in the film), especially in light of the events of September 11, 2001. The dismal failure of the Mogadishu mission in 1993 indeed prompted Clinton to avoid sending American infantry personnel hastily to Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, or to go after Osama bin Laden after the 1999 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, a point that the filmmakers once contemplated incorporating into the screen titles at the end of the film but then decided that there were enough already. MH

I want to comment on this film

 
1