Black Hawk Down: Movie, DVD Review (2001)

Directed by Ridley Scott, written by Ken Nolan, based on the book by Mark Bowden, 143 minutes, rated R.

(Originally published 2001)

Ridley Scott's unflinching war movie, "Black Hawk Down," features one of the best re-enactments of man-to-man land combat ever captured on a movie screen.

The film, which is based on Mark Bowden's 1999 best-selling book of the same name, is technically stunning yet icily detached, a visceral orgy of guns, bombs and carnage that captures the madness of urban combat and the bravery of U.S. forces, but which is so far removed from its characters, too much of its power resonates through its explosions--and not through the men being harmed or killed by them.

Working from a script by Ken Nolan, Scott's film is about the real-life Battle of the Black Sea, the Oct. 3rd, 1993 U.S. mission to remove Gen. Muhammad Farah Aidid's militia from the ravaged city of Mogadishu, Somalia.

As outlined by Maj. Gen. William F. Garrison (Sam Shepard) to the Army's elite Rangers and Delta Force, the mission should have been relatively simple, taking under an hour to execute. But because of poor planning, arrogance on behalf of the soldiers and a string of bad luck, it turned into a botched, 15-hour nightmare that went horribly wrong.

Indeed, after two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down by Somali gunfire, 100 troops became trapped on hostile ground. Suddenly, the mission's focus shifted away from capturing Aidid's men to getting our men out of Mogadishu alive.

For the next two hours, audiences are slammed with the battle as it erupts and blooms. What Scott has captured is ferocious and unrelenting; there's never a false moment, never a time when it feels as if any of this has been staged. It's a brilliant, devastating feat of filmmaking that ends with 73 Americans injured and 18 dead--including two men from Maine, Staff Sgt. Thomas Fields of Lisbon and Master Sgt. Gary Gordon of Lincoln.

Audiences will recognize some of the actors--Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore, Jason Isaacs, Orlando Bloom and Jeremy Piven, among dozens of others--but because the cast is so large, it's impossible to connect with them individually. Instead, audiences must bond with the group, which is difficult to do given Scott's determination to make a war movie focused purely on battle--and not on the lives being destroyed by it.

Grade: B