Black Hawk Down (film)

Black Hawk Down
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Ridley Scott
Produced by	Jerry Bruckheimer Ridley Scott
Screenplay by	Ken Nolan
Based on	Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War by Mark Bowden
Starring	Josh Hartnett Ewan McGregor Tom Sizemore Eric Bana Kim Coates William Fichtner Ewen Bremner Sam Shepard Johnny Strong Nikolaj Coster-Waldau
Music by	Hans Zimmer
Cinematography	Sławomir Idziak
Edited by	Pietro Scalia
Production company	Revolution Studios Jerry Bruckheimer Films Scott Free Productions
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date	December 28, 2001 (2001-12-28) (United States)
Running time	144 minutes
Country	United States United Kingdom[1]
Language	English
Budget	$92 million[2]
Box office	$173 million[3]

Black Hawk Down is a 2001 war film produced and directed by Ridley Scott from a screenplay by Ken Nolan. It is based on the 1999 non-fiction book of the same name by journalist Mark Bowden. As an embedded journalist, he covered the 1993 raid in Mogadishu by the U.S. military, aimed at capturing faction leader Mohamed Farrah Aidid. The ensuing firefight became known as the Battle of Mogadishu. The film features a large ensemble cast, including Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Eric Bana, Tom Sizemore, William Fichtner, Jason Isaacs, Tom Hardy in his feature film debut, and Sam Shepard.

Black Hawk Down won two Academy Awards for Best Film Editing and Best Sound Mixing at the 74th Academy Awards.^[4] In 2009, an extended cut of the film was released on DVD. The cut contained an additional eight minutes of footage increasing the running time to 152 minutes. This extended cut has yet to be released on Blu-ray.

Plot

Following the ousting of the central government in 1993 amid a civil war that had started in 1991, the United Nations Security Council authorized a military operation in Somalia, with a peacekeeping mandate. After the bulk of the peacekeepers were withdrawn, the Mogadishu-based militia loyal to Mohamed Farrah Aidid declared war on the remaining UN personnel. In response, the U.S. Army deployed three of its special operations forces – 75th Rangers, Delta Force counter-terrorist operators, and 160th SOAR - Night Stalkers aviators – to Mogadishu to capture Aidid, who has proclaimed himself president of the country.

To consolidate his power and subdue the population in the south, Aidid and his militia seize Red Cross food shipments, while the UN forces are powerless to intervene directly. Outside Mogadishu, Rangers and Delta Force capture Osman Ali Atto, a faction leader selling arms to Aidid's militia. The US plans a mission to capture Omar Salad Elmi and Abdi Hassan Awale Qeybdiid, two of Aidid's top advisers.

The U.S. forces include experienced men as well as new recruits, including 18-year-old PFC Todd Blackburn and a desk clerk, SPC Grimes, going on his first mission. Staff Sergeant Matthew Eversmann receives his first command, of Ranger Chalk Four, after his lieutenant needs medical treatment.

The operation begins and Delta Force operators capture Aidid's advisers inside the target building. The Rangers and helicopters escorting the ground-extraction convoy take heavy fire, while Eversmann's Chalk Four is dropped a block away by mistake. Blackburn is severely injured when he falls from one of the Black Hawk helicopters, so three Humvees led by SSG Jeff Struecker are detached from the convoy to return Blackburn to the UN-held Mogadishu Airport.

SGT Dominick Pilla is shot and killed just as Struecker's column departs, and shortly thereafter Black Hawk Super Six-One, piloted by CWO Clifton "Elvis" Wolcott crashes when shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade. Both Wolcott and his co-pilot Dan Briley are killed, the two crew chiefs are wounded, and one Delta Force sniper Busch on board escapes in an MH-6 Little Bird helicopter, although Busch dies later from injuries.

The ground forces are rerouted to converge on the crash site. The Somali militia erects roadblocks, and LTC Danny McKnight's Humvee column is unable to reach the crash area while sustaining heavy casualties including Joyce, Alphabet and Wex. Meanwhile, two Ranger Chalks, including Eversmann's unit, reach Super-Six One's crash site and set up a defensive perimeter to await evacuation with the two wounded men and the fallen pilots. In the interim, Super Six-Four, piloted by CWO Michael Durant, is also shot down by an RPG and crashes several blocks away.

With CPT Mike Steele's Rangers pinned down and sustaining heavy casualties, no ground forces can reach Super Six-Four's crash site nor reinforce the Rangers defending Super Six-One. Two Delta Force snipers, SFC Randy Shughart and MSG Gary Gordon, are inserted by helicopter to Super Six-Four's crash site, where they find Durant still alive. The site is eventually overrun, Gordon and Shughart are killed, and Durant is captured by Aidid's militia before the angry mob of Somali civilians can kill him as well.

McKnight's column relinquish their attempt to reach Six-One's crash site and return to base with their prisoners and the casualties. The men prepare to go back to extract the Rangers and the fallen pilots, and MG Garrison sends LTC Joe Cribbs to ask for reinforcements from the 10th Mountain Division, including Malaysian and Pakistani armored units from the UN coalition.

As night falls, Aidid's militia launch a sustained assault on the trapped Americans at Super Six-One's crash site. Jamie Smith is killed while covering for his teammate when he gets shot in the leg and bleeds out despite everyone trying to help him. The militants are held off throughout the night by strafing runs and rocket attacks from AH-6J Little Bird helicopter gunships, until the 10th Mountain Division's relief column is able to reach and save the American soldiers. The wounded and casualties are evacuated in the vehicles, but a few of Rangers and Delta Force soldiers are forced to run on foot from the crash site; after fighting through militia forces, they eventually reach the Pakistani Compound UN Safe Zone. Steele visits his dying friend Ruiz as all the wounded are tended to.

The end titles recount the immediate aftermath of the mission and end of US military operations in Somalia: Michael Durant was released after 11 days of captivity, after which President Bill Clinton withdrew all US forces from Somalia. Mohamed Farah Aidid was killed in 1996.

Cast

Production

Adapting Black Hawk Down: a Story of Modern War by Mark Bowden was the idea of director Simon West, who suggested to Jerry Bruckheimer that he should buy the film rights and let West direct. West moved on to direct Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) instead.^[5]

Ken Nolan was credited as screenwriter, and others contributed uncredited: Mark Bowden wrote an adaptation of his own book, Stephen Gaghan was hired to do a rewrite, Steven Zaillian and Ezna Sands rewrote the majority of Gaghan and Nolan's work, actor Sam Shepard (MGen. Garrison) rewrote some of his own dialogue, and Eric Roth wrote Josh Hartnett and Eric Bana's concluding speeches. Ken Nolan was on set for four months rewriting his script and the previous work by Gaghan, Zaillian, and Bowden. He was given sole screenwriting credit by a WGA committee.

The book relied on a dramatization of participant accounts, which were the basis of the movie. SPC John Stebbins was renamed as fictional "John Grimes." Stebbins had been convicted by court martial in 1999 for sexually assaulting his daughter.^[6] Mark Bowden said the Pentagon, ever sensitive about public image decided to alter factual history by requesting the change.^[7] Bowden wrote early screenplay drafts, before Bruckheimer gave it to screenwriter Nolan. The POW-captor conversation, between pilot Mike Durant and militiaman Firimbi, is from a Bowden script draft.

To keep the film at a manageable length, 100 key figures in the book were condensed to 39. The movie also does not feature any Somali actors.^[8] Additionally, no Somali consultants were hired for accuracy, according to writer Bowden.^[9]

For military verisimilitude, the Ranger actors took a one-week Ranger familiarization course at Fort Benning, the Delta Force actors took a two-week commando course from the 1st Special Warfare Training Group at Fort Bragg, and Ron Eldard and the actors playing 160th SOAR helicopter pilots were lectured by captured aviator Michael Durant at Fort Campbell.

The U.S. Army supplied the materiel and the helicopters from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. Most pilots (e.g., Keith Jones, who speaks some dialogue) had participated in the historic battle on October 3–4, 1993.^[10]

On the last day of their week-long Army Ranger orientation at Fort Benning, the actors who portrayed the Rangers received letters slipped under their doors. It thanked them for their hard work, and asked them to "tell our story true", signed with the names of the men who died in the Mogadishu firefight.^[10] A platoon of Rangers from B-3/75 did the fast-roping scenes and appeared as extras; John Collette, a Ranger Specialist during the battle, served as a stunt performer.^[11]

Many of the actors bonded with the soldiers who trained them for their roles. Actor Tom Sizemore said, "What really got me at training camp was the Ranger Creed. I don't think most of us can understand that kind of mutual devotion. It's like having 200 best friends and every single one of them would die for you".^[10]

Filming began in March 2001 in Salé, Morocco, and concluded in late June.^[12]

Although the filmmakers considered filming in Jordan, they found the city of Amman too built up and landlocked. Scott and production designer Arthur Max subsequently turned to Morocco, where they had previously worked on Gladiator. Scott preferred that urban setting for authenticity.^[10] Most of the film was photographed in the cities of Rabat and Salé; the Task Force Ranger base sequences were filmed at Kénitra.^[13]

The film features soldiers wearing helmets with their last names on them. Although this was not accurate, director Ridley Scott used this device to help the audience distinguish among the characters because "they all look the same once the uniforms are on".^[14]

Reception

Controversies and inaccuracies

Soon after Black Hawk Down's release, the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in California denounced what they felt was its brutal and dehumanizing depiction of Somalis and called for its boycott.^[24]

In a radio interview, Brendan Sexton, an actor who briefly appeared in the movie, said the version of the film which made it onto theater screens significantly differed from the one recounted in the original script. According to him, many scenes asking hard questions of the US regarding the violent realities of war and the true purpose of their mission in Somalia were cut.^[25]

In a review featured in The New York Times, film critic Elvis Mitchell expressed dissatisfaction with the film's "lack of characterization" and opined that the film "reeks of glumly staged racism".^[26] Owen Gleiberman and Sean Burns, the film critics for the mainstream magazine Entertainment Weekly and the alternative newspaper Philadelphia Weekly, respectively, echoed the sentiment that the depiction was racist.^[27]

American film critic Wheeler Winston Dixon also found the film's "absence of motivation and characterization" disturbing, and wrote that while American audiences might find the film to be a "paean to patriotism", other audiences might find it to be a "deliberately hostile enterprise"; nevertheless, Dixon lauded the film's "spectacular display of pyrotechnics coupled with equally adroit editing."^[28]

Jerry Bruckheimer, the film's producer, rejected such claims on The O'Reilly Factor, putting them down to political correctness in part due to Hollywood's liberal leanings."Down the Tubes". Philadelphia Weekly. ^[29]

Somali nationals charge that the African actors chosen to play the Somalis in the film do not resemble the culturally unique features of the Horn of Africa, nor does the language they communicate in sound like the Afro-Asiatic tongue spoken by the Somali people. They also claim the abrasive way lines are delivered and lack of authenticity regarding Somali culture fails to capture the tone, mannerisms, and spirit of actual life in Somalia. No Somali actors were used in the movie.^[8]

In an interview with the BBC, the faction leader Osman Ali Atto said that many aspects of the film are factually incorrect. Taking exception with the ostentatious character chosen to portray him Ali Atto claimed he neither looks like the actor who portrayed him, nor smokes cigars or wears earrings,^[30] all later confirmed by SEAL Team Six sniper Howard E. Wasdin in his 2012 memoirs. Wasdin also indicated that while the character in the movie ridiculed his captors, in reality, Atto seemed concerned that Wasdin and his men had been sent to kill rather than apprehend him.^[31] Atto additionally stated that he had not been consulted about the project nor approached for permission, and that the film sequence re-enacting his arrest contained several inaccuracies:^[30]

First of all when I was caught on 21 September, I was only travelling with one Fiat 124, not three vehicles as it shows in the film[…] And when the helicopter attacked, people were hurt, people were killed[...] The car we were travelling in, (and) I have got proof, it was hit at least 50 times. And my colleague Ahmed Ali was injured on both legs[…] I think it was not right, the way they portrayed both the individual and the action. It was not right.^[30]

Navy SEAL Wasdin similarly remarked that while olive green military rigger's tape was used to mark the roof of the car in question in the movie, his team in actuality managed to track down Atto's whereabouts using a much more sophisticated technique involving the implantation of a homing device. (This was hidden in a cane presented to Atto as a gift from a contact who routinely met with him, which eventually led the team directly to the faction leader.^[31])

Malaysian military officials whose own troops were involved in the fighting have likewise raised complaints regarding the film's accuracy. Retired Brigadier-General Abdul Latif Ahmad, who at the time commanded Malaysian forces in Mogadishu, told the AFP news agency that Malaysian moviegoers would be under the wrong impression that the real battle was fought by the Americans alone with Malaysian troops relegated to "mere bus drivers to ferry them out".^[32]

General Pervez Musharraf, who later became President of Pakistan after a coup, similarly accused the filmmakers of not crediting the work done by the Pakistani soldiers. In his autobiography In the Line of Fire: A Memoir, Musharraf wrote:

The outstanding performance of the Pakistani troops under adverse conditions is very well known at the UN. Regrettably, the film Black Hawk Down ignores the role of Malaysia and Pakistan in Somalia. When U.S. troops were trapped in the thickly populated Madina Bazaar area of Mogadishu, it was the Seventh Frontier Force Regiment of the Pakistan Army that reached out and extricated them. The bravery of the U.S. troops notwithstanding, we deserved equal, if not more, credit; but the filmmakers depicted the incident as involving only Americans.^[33]

See also

• Black Hawk Down (book)
• Battle of Mogadishu (1993)

References

External links

• Official website
• Black Hawk Down on IMDb
• Black Hawk Down at the TCM Movie Database
• Black Hawk Down at AllMovie
• Black Hawk Down at Rotten Tomatoes
• Black Hawk Down at Metacritic
• Black Hawk Down at Box Office Mojo
• Black Hawk Down at the Internet Movie Firearms Database