‘Black Hawk Down’: Just a war movie

John Behling

Some war movies are about more than war. Movies like “Apocalypse Now,” “Full Metal Jacket” and “The Thin Red Line” are commentaries about human nature. These movies ask questions that stay in your head for days.

The only thing that stayed in my head after leaving “Black Hawk Down” was the crackle of gunfire and the deafening blast of RPG explosions. “Black Hawk Down” is a war movie about war. It takes the viewer through the Battle of Mogadishu, a 15-hour ground battle between the American Delta and Ranger units and the Somali Militia of Mohamed Farrah Aadid.

“Black Hawk Down” has a great opening 20 minutes. It keeps a good pace and leads quickly to the fateful raid on Mogadishu. The film is effective here in showing the troops’ anxiety about going into battle. What remains of the film is a two hour battle scene.

While at first I appreciated how “Black Hawk Down” got right to the action, I was soon disappointed by what was lost in this hasty move. What was lost is the connection between the audience and the characters.

One of the most truly disturbing things that can ever happen in a movie is when a character who we have come to know and who seems very real to us, is shot down right before our eyes. In any war movie, part of the horror is seeing nameless soldiers die in combat.

“Black Hawk Down” fails to develop its characters, but it still tries to put a name to every face. In this way, the movie reaches something of a middle-ground and ultimately the connection is lost in a barrage of names and military haircuts. The few characters that are successfully developed, namely Sergeant Matt Eversmann (played by Josh Hartnett) and Company Clerk John Grimes (played by Ewan McGregor), never seem to be in as much danger as the other men. Although they encounter the same desperate situations, they always escape. You come to know that they will survive in the same way that you know that Batman will escape the Joker, or that Superman will save the world from Lex Luther.

When this movie is successful, however, it is really impressive. The combat scenes are very intense. Hordes of Somali Militia appear out of nowhere, sporting automatic weapons and rocket launchers. Bullets rain down on the soldiers from every direction. There are a couple of graphic moments that are very shocking, and also a couple that are very suspenseful. But the suspense is often ruined by not allowing a single scene to build long enough for it to have a full effect. This relates to the overall fault of the film being too broad. It tries to cover so many aspects of the conflict with so many characters that it defeats itself by having no single scene stand out.

“Black Hawk Down” is an incredible story. It’s a graphic and intense account of a disturbing historical event. Unfortunately, its focus on the big-picture dissipates the emotional drive of the film. What results is less a true story about military heroism than it is a brutally graphic action movie.

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John Behling can be reached at: [email protected]

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