Black Hawk Down (2001)

"Only the dead have seen the end of war." -Plato

This quote is realized to be true during the course of 2001's "Black Hawk Down." This film is a rarity among Jerry Bruckheimer productions: not only is "Black Hawk Down" not a terrible film, but it is a masterpiece. For once, it does not revolve around an inane love story, nor does it even involve well-developed characters. "Black Hawk Down" is more concerned with the troops as a whole than with following two or three characters through their days at war. The film succeeds in capturing the emotions, trials, and injuries of the marines involved in a mission in Somalia that goes horribly wrong. "Black Hawk Down" shows, as good as any film I can imagine, what it was like for the men fighting in that failed mission.

It is 1993, and the food supply to Somalia is cut off by rival tribe leader Muhammad Farrad Aidid. Hundreds of thousands of Somalis starve, and so American Rangers and Delta Force soldiers are sent to restore order and to capture the warlord. They embark on a mission in the Bakara Market, an area controlled by Aidid, which is supposed to take no more than a couple of hours. A marked car is to lead them to a building where airborne troops are to meet with ground troops. The troops are supposed to secure the building, take prisoners, and be back at the base safely in a short amount of time. However, they find themselves drastically outnumbered by Aidid's militia, and so they fight for their lives for hours and hours.

The result, as captured on film by director Ridley Scott, is one of the most chilling and most powerful war films of all time. The battle scenes in "Black Hawk Down" put to shame those attempted by Michael Bay in "Pearl Harbor," which also, most ironically, was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. Bay's film contains a forty-minute-long bombing scene with special effects that almost seem cartoonish, and its bloody images are blurred so that Bay could hang on to the precious PG-13 rating. "Black Hawk Down," on the other hand, contains some of the most convincing and mesmerizing battle scenes I've ever seen (only "Saving Private Ryan" from 1998 comes close), with dark cinematography that captures how gritty and bleak it must have been for the men fighting that day.

Also unlike "Pearl Harbor" and other second-rate historical pieces, "BHD" provides us with all the information necessary for us to understand the situation at hand. Instead of letting us pick up on things as the film goes along, "BHD" gives us screen text at the beginning that tells us everything. One thing we are told about is that 300,000 Somalis have died of starvation due to Aidid's seizure of incoming food. At one point, the Americans capture Osman Atto (George Harris), the man who supplies artillery for Aidid's militia. Atto warns General Garrison (Sam Shepherd) not to get involved: "You shouldn't have come here. This is a civil war. This is our war, not yours." General Garrison responds, "300,000 dead and counting. That's not a war, Mr. Atto. That's genocide."

Getting back to the battle scenes. Scott's images of war in "BHD" are simply harrowing. We see some truly gruesome scenes of men getting killed and wounded. The opening scene shows members of Aidid's militia firing randomly at a crowd of people trying to obtain food. We also see a number of terrible wounds. A soldier finds another soldier's hand on the ground. We witness soldiers attempting to operate on one man's horribly wounded leg with their bare hands. One of the most disturbing images is a man with both his legs completely blown off.

"Black Hawk Down" is a reminder of what war truly is. It is the most ugly, dark, and painful of all things on Earth. We can act like spectators during most war films, but we're really there in "BHD." We see the pain and the panic and the chaos up front. Scott holds nothing back from us. He helps us to see it, to feel it, and, most importantly, to understand it.

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