Old reviews: Black Hawk Down (movie)

Another entry in my combatsim.com articles. Ye gods, I was way too kind to the Bruckheimer camp.  It's a little embarrassing to read this now. But even now I do think Black Hawk Down was one of the better products from that group. And I'm including the article here, faults and all.

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Black Hawk Down

by Bernard Dy

Article Type: Movie Review
Article Date: February 06, 2002


A common adage says, "The book is always better than the movie." There are several reasons this is true. The book can deliver more detail than a movie given the hour time period. The reader also interprets the book with their imagination, a more powerful force than the senses of sight and sound alone. Pundits and self-indulgent writers like me can also argue that while making a movie requires more money, making a book requires more intelligence.

Mark Bowden's Black Hawk Down, a chronicle of the fateful 1993 US mission to capture Somali warlords, continues to garner unanimous critical and popular praise. It deserves it, and its thoroughness identifies the immense research Bowden completed to write the book. Black Hawk Down the movie, in contrast, is the creation of director Ridley Scott and producer Jerry Bruckheimer, both Hollywood moguls not known for films of realism. It's easy to imagine military enthusiasts cringing when they heard the names attached to the movie. Surely the parties responsible for revisionist interpretations of history like Gladiator, patriotic claptrap like Top Gun, and utter excrement like Armageddon would find a way to destroy Bowden's masterpiece. Even when their intentions are good, as they were in Remember the Titans, they manage to mire them in clichés and dialog so hollow they challenge the pretense of non-fiction and cheapen any salvageable lessons.

If Hollywood compromised Bowden's work, it wouldn't have been the first time people with too much money have wrecked a good military story. Products the caliber of Gallipoli, Platoon, and Full Metal Jacket are rare. Black Hawk Down, however, manages to do what curmudgeons thought impossible. Bruckheimer has always been a popular rather than critical favorite, but as Spielberg did with Schindler's List, he's gone critically respectable in one stroke.

A genuine strength of the picture is in the ability of the filmmakers to depart largely from their quirks and remain faithful to the book. It helped Bruckheimer and Scott to have a bulletproof manuscript in Bowen's writing. It also probably helped that most of the action stays within a few city blocks, starting with a helicopter delivery of troops to a site, the accident that occurs only moments after the mission begins, and the deterioration of the situation.

Most importantly, the creators of the film largely upheld the book's events and avoided the flimsy patriotic dialog you'd expect from their earlier films. The picture is a faithful adaptation of Bowden's work, and that's a respectable feat because too often book-inspired movies are a travesty of their sources (see the celluloid mangling of the landmark Stephen Coonts work, Flight of the Intruder). There are some moments not from the book, such as the interview with a captured weapons salesman and Sam Shepard's General William Garrison, exaggerations of some incidents, and a pair of speeches from a Delta Force soldier, that seem synthetic but it's otherwise close. Like the book, it's an intense experience, revealing the scary and lethal nature of combat, but also serving as one of the best recent recreations of modern combat.

Unlike any war movie before it, Black Hawk Down shows how the human soldier that's changed little in centuries of warfare, works with helicopter air support that's changed mildly since Vietnam, and takes advantage of several newer technologies like night vision and airborne surveillance. The fragility of high technology is sobering (though probably not a surprise to anyone that uses computers!). Use of satellite imaging in this movie isn't real-time and user friendly as it was in the film Tom Clancy's Patriot Games. The helicopter-borne commanders and the ground-based commanders suffer communication delays when directing a ground convoy to rescue the crews of downed Black Hawk helicopters. The results are disastrous and cause the convoy to lose its way, suffering casualties as it stays longer than necessary in the streets of Mogadishu. The book discusses the Rangers' use of armor-piercing bullets being inopportune, and the movie bypasses this, but I don't fault the decision as it could have been a cumbersome point to make in a movie.

The set work is outstanding. Mogadishu looks like it sounds in the book, a dilapidated and miserable city teeming with chaos and automatic weapons. The weaponry used in the film mirrors that in the book. The low technology level of the Somalis afford the film a natural advantage, in saving the creators from the embarrassing gimmick of painting American vehicles black to stand in as enemy equipment, a shortcut military enthusiasts are happy to miss.

Some critics have noted the contrast of the Somalis, all black, being used as an easy enemy to face against an all white US Army. This is wrong; there is a black soldier among the Rangers. It is also pointless because it needlessly confuses the issue. Black Hawk Down is not about race conflicts. It is also not about the politics of the situation, though it does tend to side with Bowden's observation that the US presence in Mogadishu was a mistake. It is more about the crucible of war and how ordinary men react in it. It is about how beyond any reason or lack thereof for being in any part of the world, men can do something heroic simply for the cause of being a professional soldier, or simply because the man next to him is a brother in arms. It's the common theme of many war stories, and it never gets old because it speaks to a greater cause than any politician can. Bowden himself calls this theme of brotherhood "timeless."

Yet there is certainly another side. Black Hawk Down recalls the lessons of Vietnam. The enemy here is not Communism, but like Vietnam, there are overtones of ideological difference. The Somalis fight the Americans who enter their neighborhood and try to capture their leaders. Yes, the head leader is Mohamed Farrah Aidid, a warlord that interfered with humanitarian efforts, but the general population is likely ignorant of the politics behind the American involvement (and there are other complications: see this Slate article). Even without the full story, it's easy to imagine peoples of any nation being hostile to foreign invaders. There's also the contrast of superior technology against numerical superiority, a classic theme in East versus West military comparisons. The downed Black Hawks, each worth millions, lose to the cheap rocket propelled grenades used by the Somalis. Technology is unable to save the Americans from completing their mission without heavy casualties.

Is the mission a failure or a victory? It depends on whom you ask. Perhaps it is both. Mogadishu could be perceived as this generation's version of the Alamo. The Rangers, low on food, ammunition, and supplies, must fight to hold on through a grueling night and against countless enemies.

I haven't made much of the casting, which is generally good. Ewan McGregor looks a little healthier than the John Grimes (a.k.a. John Stebbins, see below) character Bowden paints in the book, but likeness to the real soldiers would only be a bonus since Black Hawk Down is really an ensemble effort. If there is a single protagonist to identify with, it is Josh Hartnett's Sergeant Matt Eversmann. Hartnett does a good job delivering Eversmann's idealism about the American involvement, and also his uncertainties as he's thrust into a key leadership role for the first time. All the actors to a generally solid job playing their parts. Jason Isaacs is excellent as Captain Mike Steele, the football fanatic and Ranger leader that sometimes didn't get along with the Delta Force operators.

Nothing is perfect, of course, and the creators can't resist a few of their trademarks. Besides the aforementioned Delta speeches, there's a change to the ending that adds unnecessary heroics. There are also several glory shots, where the camera captures characters of the film in slow motion, the same shots seen in Armageddon, and Con Air, and Gone in Sixty Seconds, and Pearl Harbor, and so on!

Reality Check: An interesting side controversy attends the film. Ewan McGregor's character, John Grimes, is based on John Stebbins. Stebbins is a clerk known primarily for his coffee-making prowess in the book, and performs well in the battle, earning the respect of his peers. He's presently serving a prison sentence. The filmmakers changed the name of the character. It's a gutless move, but one readers of the book will easily see through, and like the point about the armor piercing bullets, is ultimately a minor issue.

Amazing as it may seem, Black Hawk Down is different from anything you've seen before from these film makers. It's perhaps their best work. Some critics have accused the film of lacking a real story and deeper characterizations, but that's like saying a Discovery Channel special has no plot. Black Hawk Down is like those specials and is closer to a documentary. Calling it a faithful adaptation of a great book is one of the best compliments it can receive. The book is still better, but is the movie a good one to watch if you could only watch one about modern combat? Yes.