WhatzUp

Black Hawk Down
by Derek Neff

Black Hawk Down is a tragedy based on compounding errors, and it’s painful to watch how quickly and easily a military operation can become botched. Based on actual events that transpired in Somalia in 1992, Black Hawk Down tells the story of what happens when a U.S. raid on the headquarters of a despotic warlord, Gen. Aidid, goes from bad to worse to catastrophic.

Armchair generals can look back and point out rather easily the tactical mistakes that were made in the operation. The raid took place in broad daylight, for one. For another, American policymakers didn’t seem to fully understand just how hated they were by that country’s citizens, despite their good intentions. And so, when one of the Army’s Black Hawk helicopters is shot down by gun-toting people in the streets of Mogadishu, military higher-ups like Major General Garrison (played here by Sam Shepard) are forced to listen in horror as his men are systematically pursued and killed by the angry crowd.

The movie follows the situations of a variety of individual soldiers as they struggle to survive the backlash of the riot. Director Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, Hannibal) does a fine job of keeping the action believably chaotic and yet completely lucid. We are never at a loss as to what is happening, and where, and to whom. (This is the kind of work that only a master scenarist like Scott could have

delivered.) If we never get more than a passing glance at any one character, that’s due perhaps more to the expansive nature of the story being told than it is a flaw on Scott’s part. In lieu of in-depth characterization, Scott has employed the likes of such charismatic former indie-film actors as Ewan McGregor, Eric Bana, Tom Sizemore and Josh Hartnett.

The situation in Mogadishu was made worse by the standard military protocol of never leaving a man behind; far more men were killed and injured trying to rescue whatever survivors there might have been from the helicopter crash than were killed in the crash itself. The movie never openly suggests that leaving a man behind might sometimes be a good idea, but it is to the film’s credit that the answers to such questions are never simple.