January 17–24, 2002

movies

War Is Helicopters

From above, Black Hawk Down offers plenty of thrills, and not a lick of context.

by Cindy Fuchs

Black Hawk Down

Directed by Ridley Scott
A Columbia Pictures release

Hawk walk: American soldiers run for cover in Black Hawk Down.

"In my interviews with those who were in the thick of battle, they remarked again and again how much they felt like they were in a movie, and had to remind themselves that this horror, the blood, the deaths, was real."

First published as a 1997 Inquirer series, Mark Bowden’s Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War is a nearly moment-by-moment account of events in Somalia on Oct. 3 and 4, 1993. Culled from radio dispatches, survivor interviews (both American and Somalian), military records and media reports, the book recounts the battle that erupted in Mogadishu when Somalians attacked U.S. Army Special Forces — Rangers and Deltas, or D-boys — sent in to capture two of warlord Gen. Mohamed Farrah Aidid’s top lieutenants. As hard as Bowden worked to document what happened, it’s striking that he concludes by noting the troops’ sense of unreality, of "feeling weirdly out of place, as though they did not belong here, fighting feelings of disbelief, anger and ill-defined betrayal."

Unsurprisingly, the movie version of Black Hawk Down, directed by Ridley Scott and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, takes something of an opposite approach. An action movie dressed up like an art film, it’s not about betrayal or anger, but heroism and patriotic fervor. While it surely establishes the city’s menace, such that American soldiers are repeatedly beset by faceless Somalian snipers and hordes, the film omits any references to reasons for the aggressive response to the U.S. invasion. It opens with a series of typewritten facts, just enough to sketch clear moral lines: In 1992, 300,000 Somalians died of starvation when Aidid stole U.N. food deliveries and killed U.N. troops. In October 1993, the U.S. mounted an extraction, Rangers in Black Hawk and Little Bird helicopters and Deltas in a Humvee convoy.

The troops do get their men, but the mission is costly. A note at the film’s end reminds you that 18 U.S. soldiers (all named in the credits) and 1,000 unnamed Somalians died that day. Taking the American boys’ perspective, the film becomes a surreal thrill ride, a well-crafted and compelling surface of color, movement and noise. Cinematographer Slavomir Idziak and editor Pietro Scalia put together a masterful hodgepodge of intense close-ups, spectacular chopper point-of-view shots, fast cuts and pans, stunning surveillance images and grisly prosthetics and effects.

Of course, this perspective also has limitations, and that’s the point. You see the SOAR (Special Operations Aviation Regiment) chopper pilots appalled when Aidid’s men attack a Red Cross food station, and they are unable to intervene unless they are shot at. Shortly after, the cowboyish Deltas, led by the charismatic Sgt. Hoot Gibson (Eric Bana), are hooting and hollering, shooting wild boar to serve up as a tasty treat for their bored-to-tears comrades. As Gen. Garrison (Sam Shepard) discusses the futility of chasing Aidid with a detained gun merchant (George Harris), cigar smoke swirls ominously around the prisoner. By the time the idealistic Ranger Sgt. Eversmann (Josh Hartnett) asserts that he’s in it to "make a difference," the gung-ho good-guyness of the Americans is clear.

By the same token, the film underlines the villainy of every character of color, save for the single black Ranger with a (minimal) speaking part, Kurth (Gabriel Casseus). Once the fight begins, the American troops are alone sympathetic, tossed about in a melee of handheld shots and smash-cuts. Not only are the scrambling, distant Somalians demonized, but as well, Pakistani members of the U.N. squad only obstruct action. Meanwhile, the Americans — resourceful Grimes (Ewan McGregor), fearless McKnight (Tom Sizemore), steadfast Steele (Jason Isaacs) and newbie Blackburn (Orlando Bloom) — appear as recognizable types, afraid but valiant and vivid. Their situation in Black Hawk Down is as familiar as they are: "Mog" (a new arrival is chastised for calling the city by its full name) is yet another heart of darkness, populated by unknowable and frightening "others," here known as "skinnies" or "sammies."

Unremarked by the American troops is the fact that the Somalians’ skinniness is a real effect, not only of their oppression by local warlords like Aidid, but also their Third World status, their lack of access to a "global" economy and political agenda. The film doesn’t begin to address why the "sammies" might have stripped and dragged the body of a dead American soldier through the streets, surely the battle’s most resonant image, only glimpsed here in its initial moments. And it doesn’t re-create the alarming television shots of captured pilot Mike Durant (played by Ron Eldard), who was released after 19 days. Instead, you see Durant’s view of a crowd of black faces as they swarm over him, and a brief bit of his battered face as he’s lectured by his captor Firimbi (Treva Etienne): "In Somalia, killing is negotiation. You think if you get General Aidid, we all stop killing? There will be no peace. This is our world."

Firimbi’s observation is the closest the film comes to articulating a context beyond the U.S.’s concerns. The resolute absence of any glimpse into "their world" ensures that Black Hawk Down, no matter how well it approximates the soldiers’ sense that they were "in a movie," will not get at the multiple stakes involved, for Americans as well as Somalians.