Director: Ridley Scott
Starring: Josh Hartnett,Tom Sizemore,Ewan McGregor,Jeremy Piven
Someone told me that one of the main protagonists portrayed in the movie turned out to be a child molester. So I’m watching this movie and trying to figure out which one has an affinity for underaged girls. Yeah, I’m sick. This is what I think about when I go to the theater…which explains why I often go to theaters alone.
Black Hawk Down is based on a book written by Mark Bowden recounting the Battle of Mogadishu, a battle that I could not spell on my own (I cut and pasted). Apparently, it was the longest sustained ground battle by the American soldiers since the Vietnam War. And it involved the elite Delta Force and Army Rangers.
On October, 1993, the bunch of them decide to go capture a Somalian warlord who has been withholding rice from the country’s peasants, dying of hunger. By the time, the United Nations decides to do anything, some quarter million of them died. Against this backdrop, the story takes place.
Unlike other American missions, this one day affair goes terribly wrong. First, the Justin Timberlake (who also played the Justin Timberlake look-a-like in the Lord of the Rings) falls off a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, screwing up an already tenuous plan of execution to capture a bunch of Somalian officials. From that point on, the movie is two hours of shooting, people dying, and such.
Staff Sergeant Matt Eversmann (Josh Hartnett) leads one group of inexperienced soldiers against the entire city of Mogadishu. When I say the entire city, I mean it. Every Somalian has an automatic and starts shooting at the American soldiers. So what was supposed to be a thirty minute mission becomes a long drawn out battle with dozens of American soldiers trapped in a hostile territory.
A bunch of other actors round out a fine cast who portray the soldiers fairly. The movie is not anti- or pro-American. It depicts the battle as it is. High tech weaponry in combat, the harsh reality of a third-world country desperate for food and relief, and the general unwelcome of the Americans in this domestic civil war. True to the motto of “Leave No Man Behind”, the Rangers and Delta Force exchange fires with the Somalia civilians and soldiers.
I’m not a big fan of war movies but this movie kicked butt. I was simply blown away by the realistic depiction (FYI: the military is using this movie as a training video). Apparently, bootleg copies of this movie are floating around Somalia. And the Somalians cheer whenever an American soldier got killed or a chopper got shot down.
My review is not doing this movie any justice. This is an amazing movie and you should see it. And maybe you can tell me which of the soldiers was the child molester. By the way, despite the title, more than one Black Hawk goes down. Hate to give it away but Jeremy Piven is not a good pilot.
