A war film worth seeing

by Jason Zingale
Staff Writer

On the afternoon of Oct. 3, 1993, 160 elite U.S. soldiers swept into a hostile district of Mogadishu as part of a United Nations peacekeeping operation. Their mission was to abduct two lieutenant prisoners from a murderous warlord controlling the area. The mission was supposed to take less than an hour — it lasted until the next morning. Eighteen soldiers died, and 73 were wounded.

••Black Hawk Down•• is a lean, mean war movie that will astonish viewers with its stark realism and exhaust them with its intensity. Directed by Ridley Scott, ••Black Hawk•• edges away from the Hollywood war movie cliché and forms a new genre on its own by seemingly giving it the feel of a raw documentary. In a fast-paced and uncommonly intense two-and-a-half hours, the film shows what happens when bad luck, confusion and technological limitations converge.

••Black Hawk Down•• is a stunning depiction of war. So much so that it is hard to remember this is not a documentary. Yet an approximation of a documentary is what Scott has achieved. Based on Mark Bowden’s account of the unruly battle that took place between U.S. troops and Somali street fighters in an area of Mogadishu, the picture has a riveting sense of time and place that smells of explosives, helicopter fuel and blood. Everything is planned to run normally. Get in and get out.

Only it doesn’t work out that way. A downed helicopter is just the first of many incidents that turn a routine mission into a grotesque dance of death, dismemberment and persistent heroism. The elite squads are determined to leave no one behind, dead or alive.

The cast comes together to form the tight-knit group of soldiers within the film, leaving little room for individual stardom. The ensemble consists of veterans and recently popular actors, including Sam Sheppard, Tom Sizemore, Josh Hartnett and Ewan McGregor. ••Black Hawk Down•• makes a point of putting the audience in the center of combat, and it never lets up. It remains primitive and raw until the very end.

••Black Hawk Down•• is a riveting film that endures the emotional and physical hardships of war through each soldier, yet director Scott is able to show that every soldier demonstrates signs of life and hope in a lifeless atmosphere. ••Black Hawk•• is not another Army recruit commercial the way prior war films have been but instead works as a great film displaying nationalism at its best.