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Black Hawk Down (2001): Ridley Scott
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PLOT: Ridley Scott's "Black Hawk Down" conveys the raw, chaotic urgency of ground-force battle in a worst-case scenario. With exacting detail, the film re-creates the American siege of the Somalian city of Mogadishu in October 1993, when a 45-minute mission turned into a 16-hour ordeal of bloody urban warfare. Helicopter-borne U.S. Rangers were assigned to capture key lieutenants of Somali warlord Muhammad Farrah Aidid, but when two Black Hawk choppers were felled by rocket-propelled grenades, the U.S. soldiers were forced to fend for themselves in the battle-torn streets of Mogadishu, attacked from all sides by armed Aidid supporters. Based on author Mark Bowden's bestselling account of the battle, Scott's riveting, action-packed film follows a sharp ensemble cast in some of the most authentic battle sequences ever filmed. The loss of 18 soldiers turned American opinion against further involvement in Somalia, but "Black Hawk Down" makes it clear that the men involved were undeniably heroic.
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Unsurprisingly, the movie version of Black Hawk Down, directed by Ridley Scott and produced by the indefatigable Jerry Bruckheimer, takes something of an opposite approach. An action movie dressed up like an art film, it is not about betrayal or anger, but heroism and patriotic fervor. Given that the film was completed well before September 11, the fact that its triumphant tone seems so completely suited to the current zeitgeist is not a little alarming. And this isn’t even taking into account the increasing drumbeat for a U.S. military search for Osama bin Laden in Somalia (where CNN has now stationed Christiane Amanpour), a country that, like Iraq, is beginning to seem “unfinished business.”
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Black Hawk Down is a 2001 film by Ridley Scott, based on the book Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War by Mark Bowden. It depicts the Battle of Mogadishu, which was part of the U.S. military's 1993 campaign to capture Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. The movie stars an ensemble cast, including Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore, Eric Bana, Ewen Bremner, William Fichtner, Sam Shepherd, and Orlando Bloom. Several of the main cast members had previously worked together with producer Jerry Bruckheimer in Pearl Harbor.[1] The film won two Academy Awards, for Film Editing and Sound in 2001.
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After the success of Gladiator, it wasn't unusual to see director Ridley Scott turn to Hans Zimmer again for the score to Black Hawk Down, his fierce adaptation of Mark Bowden's account of the tragic 1993 American military intervention in Somalia. What was more surprising was the schedule Scott imposed on the German-born composer: 15 days to write, arrange, and record the film's nearly two hours of music. The results of Zimmer's miraculous two-week musical campaign not only belie those constraints; they instantly take their place alongside The Thin Red Line as some of the most compelling music he's produced. The gambit here is simple--portray the combatants as two warring tribes, with their native musics locked in a tense dance for domination. Yet the results are geometrically more complex and artistically rewarding, with thrash guitar and speed metal/hip-hop/martial rhythms encroaching on, then fusing with, the timeless indigenous music of North Africa to become something wholly other. Senegalese vocalist Baaba Maal contributes greatly, as do Algerian worldbeat artist Rachid Tara and the duet of Denez Prigent and Zimmer's Gladiator collaborator Lisa Gerrard (Dead Can Dance).
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Unsurprisingly, the movie version of Black Hawk Down, directed by Ridley Scott, produced by the indefatigable Jerry Bruckheimer, and approved by the U.S. military, takes something of an opposite approach. Newly released on DVD, the film masterfully recuperates a not-so-well-planned mission gone bad. As the film’s military advisor, Bruckheimer, and several of the actors underline in the DVD’s making-of documentary, “On the Set,” the film’s aim is to “honor” fallen U.S. soldiers. Well, of course. And the best way to do this is to focus on their experience of chaos and crisis, and to offer as little broad context as possible, since the soldiers went in with so little.
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![Black Hawk Down - Special Edition [2002]](http://retrieverimages.lycos.com/images/b/l/a/black-hawk-down-2001/i/003.jpg)
Black Hawk Down is the action packed true harrowing account of US Military action in Mogadishu, Somalia. As part of a UN Peacekeeping force, a group of elite US soldiers undertake a mission to abduct several top lieutenants of a Somalian warlord to stop the civil war that has been tearing the country apart. The carefully planned mission goes terribly wrong, resulting in the US military's single biggest firefight since Vietnam. From famed action producer Jerry Bruckheimer and acclaimed action director Ridley Scott.
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Ridley Scott