In order to place you deeply into the maelstrom of cacophonous hell that is war, filmmakers often have to embrace the chaos if they’re going to make you believe that bullets are genuinely whizzing past your ear and a sudden death awaits like a coiled spring, ready to claim you. With that in mind, surely there’s not a war film more chaotic than Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down, the movie based on Mark Bowden’s exhaustive account of the Battle Of Mogadishu, which saw the forces of Task Force Ranger bloodily clash with militia in a frenzied firefight that lasted a grueling 18 hours and left hundreds dead.
While Saving Private Ryan’s opening salvo of the Normany Landings at D-Day is undoubtedly the most harrowing battle scene ever committed to film, Scott takes the same kind of sustained horror and has it occupy virtually the lion’s share of the movie, resulting in an experience that’s every bit as horrific, chaotic and exhilarating as you can get without actually fighting in a war yourself.
In the October of 1993, a task force containing a Ranger Regiment, Delta Force operators and flight crews of the 160th SOAR, headed into Mogadishu in order to capture the advisors of genocidal militia leader Mohammed Farrah Aidid in a mission that was supposed to last barely an hour. As the military force enters the city via Black Hawk helicopters from the air and a convoy of heavily armed vehicles from the ground, Staff Sergeant Matthew Eversmann is heavily focused on the mission at hand as fate has granted it as his first command. Yet fate came be something of a spiteful bitch as a random accident causes one of the Black Hawks to hover in place a bit too long, allowing a well-placed RPG to bring it and its crew down into a very hostile city.
From there, things progressively get worse as the mission gets ever more out of control with the forces sent to back up the crashed vehicle unable to reach it due to the narrow streets and copious impromptu road blocks, rangers scattered to the wind and combatants on both sides soaking up bullets like sunshine. As fatalities steadily mount, we focus on numerous troops as they try to negotiate a scenario that gets all the more FUBAR with every passing minute. Be it Eversmann’s desire to bring all of his men home; McKnight’s desperate attempts to reach the crash site with his bullet riddled convoy; Gimes’ unnerving habit of being a magnet for random RPGs despite working at a desk only hours before or the cool, calculating methods of ice-blooded Delta operative Norm “Hoot” Gibson, they all do what they can to fulfill their out of control mission – but when a second Black Hawk is brought down, all bets are well and truly off.
When you enlist one of cinemas greatest living visualists (Ridley Scott, in case you were wondering) under the watch of one of Hollywood’s most bombastic producers (tip of the hat to Jerry Bruckheimer) and let them loose on one of the greatest clusterfucks in modern military, you’re going to get an experience quite unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. While there’s some the expected chest thumping that you’d expect from a modern-day war film, this isn’t a film that’s preoccupied with winning a battle or waving any flags, no, this is a film preoccupied more with sheer survival, while still having the back of the man next to you as large amounts of shit (plus many bullets and rocket propelled grenades) hit the wall.
However, while many filmmakers would balk at attempting a movie where its sizable cast and many moving parts are chiefly obscured by the sheer panic of the situation, Scott seems to relish the challenge of helming and blocking out a film that’s too complex to follow. In fact, the veteran director seems to be collecting potential story telling flaws like Infinity Stones, but instead of hiding them, uses them to make the experience of being trapped in an 18-hour gunfight as a punishing an experience as you’d expect. If the dialogue isn’t delivered in clipped military-speak, it’s usually screamed over the sound of clattering gunfire and thanks to the fact that the majority of the cast sport matching uniform and buzzcuts means that during the most frenetic moments, you’ll have no idea who the hell your looking at – which means if you can’t tell your Ewan McGregors from your Ewan Bremmers, you’re going to be shit out of luck.
Actually, time has been usually kind in that respect as the ludicrously packed cast suffered by the fact that not many people knew who these people were back in 2001 – oh sure, Josh Hartnett, William Fichtner, Tom Sizemore and Sam Sheppard are easy enough to spot in a crowd and if you’d watched Trainspotting or The Phantom Menace, then the features of McGregor and Bremmer are vaguely familiar – but names like Tom Hardy, Orlando Bloom, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Eric Bana hadn’t yet reached household name levels of fame, so their subsequent breakouts make following the various characters that little bit easier.
However, utilising a cast who all look the same and dropping them into endless, rubble strewn streets that all seem identical if there isn’t a wreck of a helicopter lying in the middle of it.
Those hoping for a more balanced view of the conflict in Mogadishu will no doubt be irked by the Somalians being mostly portrayed as faceless attackers due to the need to keep the densely packed plot and endless tension moving forward – but like it or not, Scott isn’t actually making a movie about the issues in Mogadishu and all the complex politics in contained rather than one about being in the actual battle where rationality and politics inevitably collapse either in the face of stern training or blind hate. Taken on this criteria, Black Hawk Down is a powerful success which gives huge credence to the training and bravery of the military personnel who found themselves trapped within this deadly black comedy of errors.
In fact, in the face of such awe inspiring bad luck, Scott can’t help indulge in some gallows humour, mostly surrounding McGregor’s Grimes as he’s advised not to bring such equipment as extra armour and night vision goggles along due to the assumed brief nature of the mission, freaked out by a wish of luck delivered uncharacteristically in person by their General and has not one, not two, but three butt-puckering close encounters with RPG fire.
Focusing less on overt patriotism and more on the devotion the Rangers live by (their creed of Never Leave A Man Behind is resolutely tested) and their desire to keep one another save, Black Hawk Down proves to be less a true story and more of a realistic experience as gives you an experience of battle from the inside out. And while its flaws are plentiful, Scott chooses it wear them proudly on display like badges of honor, utilising them to enhance the horror and sensory bewilderment that comes from fighting for your life for over half a day.
🌟🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 