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Black Hawk Down (film)

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Black Hawk Down
Theatrical release poster
Directed byRidley Scott
Screenplay byKen Nolan
Produced byJerry Bruckheimer
Ridley Scott
StarringJosh Hartnett
Eric Bana
Ewan McGregor
Tom Sizemore
William Fichtner
Ron Eldard
Ewen Bremner
Tom Hardy
Orlando Bloom
Jeremy Piven
Sam Shepard
Jason Isaacs
Ioan Gruffudd
Johnny Strong
Ty Burrell
CinematographySławomir Idziak
Edited byPietro Scalia
Music byHans Zimmer
Production
companies
Distributed byColumbia Pictures
Release dates
  • December 28, 2001 (2001-12-28) (Limited)
  • January 18, 2002 (2002-01-18) (Worldwide)
Running time
144 minutes
CountryTemplate:Film US
LanguageEnglish
Budget$92 million
Box office$172,989,651[1]

Black Hawk Down is a 2001 American war-drama film depicting the Battle of Mogadishu, a raid integral to the United States' effort to capture Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid.

Black Hawk Down is based on the book of the same name by Mark Bowden. The film is co-produced and directed by Ridley Scott. The film won Academy Awards for Best Film Editing and Best Sound at the 74th Academy Awards.

Plot

On the afternoon of October 3rd 1993, a military raid took place. It was made up of Delta Force Soldiers, Army Rangers and 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. This was an attempt to capture two of Warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid's senior subordinates in the Bakara Market Mogadishu, Somalia. The mission was led by Major General William F. Garrison and was supposed to take no more than half an hour. The extraction by the Delta team was successful, but the Somali Militia, armed with RPG's, shot down two Black Hawk helicopters. The resulting rescue extended the mission to over 18 hours.

The film follows many characters through the build-up, assault and rescue. It shows how Staff Sergeant Matt Eversmann (Josh Hartnett) is placed in charge of Ranger Chalk Four, before portraying the raid and successful extraction of the wanted persons; and shows the first injury, as PFC Todd Blackburn (Orlando Bloom) falls from a helicopter as it maneuvers to avoid an RPG. While mounted on a .50 cal machine gun, Dominick Pilla (Danny Hoch) is killed while the convoy is trying to escape the city. This is the beginning of the indication that the troops are overwhelmed by the volume of enemy militia and builds up to the two helicopter crashes: Super Six-One piloted by CWO Cliff "Elvis" Wolcott (Jeremy Piven), and Super Six-Four piloted by CWO Mike Durant (Ron Eldard). Durant is taken prisoner after the two Delta snipers who requested to be inserted near the crash site of Super Six-Four (Randy Shughart (Johnny Strong) and Gary Gordon (Nikolaj Coster Waldau)) are killed while defending him.

The film also follows two Chalk Four machine gunners who are supposed to return with the extraction team, but miss the Humvees as they leave, and get lost. One of them is deafened by machine-gun fire, but they eventually make their way back to Eversmann's position. Corporal Jamie Smith (Charlie Hofheimer) attempts to rescue one of them who is hit, causing the radio he is carrying on his back to explode, but Smith is shot in his femoral artery as well and eventually bleeds to death as the Rangers attempt to give him medical care.

The film approaches its conclusion as the U.S. Forces regain control with strafing runs by Little Bird Helicopters. A convoy of United Nations Pakistani troops and soldiers from the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division, along with other United Nations forces, including Malaysian Army elements, arrive to extract the wounded. Back at the base, Sergeant First Class Norm "Hoot" Hooten begins to restock on ammunition, preparing to go back out to rescue downed soldiers and Eversmann tells the now deceased Jamie Smith that he will fulfill his dying wish which was to tell his parents he "fought hard today."

The film ends with text informing the viewer that "over 1,000 Somalis died and 19 Americans lost their lives in the conflict." The 19 soldiers and officers who died are then listed by name and rank. "Mike Durant was released after 11 days of captivity. On the 2nd of August 1996, Warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid was killed in Mogadishu. General Garrison retired the following day."

Cast

Rangers

Delta Force

Miscellaneous

Background and production

Black Hawk Down was originally the idea of director Simon West who suggested to Jerry Bruckheimer that he should buy the film rights to the book Black Hawk Down: a Story of Modern War by Mark Bowden and let him (West) direct; but West moved on to direct Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) instead.

Despite Ken Nolan being credited as screenwriter, others contributed to it uncredited; Steven Zaillian re-wrote the majority of the script; Sam Shepard (MGen. Garrison) wrote most of his dialogue; Eric Roth wrote Josh Hartnett and Eric Bana's concluding speeches. Composed mostly of participant accounts, Spec 4 John Stebbins became the fictional "John Grimes", because Stebbins was convicted by court martial, in 1999, for sexually assaulting his daughter.[2] Reporter Bowden said the Pentagon requested the change.[3] He wrote early screenplay drafts, before Bruckheimer gave it to a screenwriter; the PoW-Captor conversation, between pilot Mike Durant and militiaman Firimbi, is from a Bowden script draft.

For military verisimilitude, the Ranger actors took a crash, one-week Ranger familiarization course at Fort Benning, Ga.; the Delta Force actors took a two-week commando course, from the 1st Special Warfare Training Group, at Ft. Bragg, N.C. Ron Eldard and the actors playing 160th SOAR helicopter pilots were lectured by captured aviator Michael Durant at Fort Campbell, Ky. The U.S. Army supplied the matériel and the helicopters from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment; most pilots (e.g. Keith Jones, who speaks some dialogue) participated in the battle on October 3–4, 1993. Moreover, a platoon of Rangers from B-3/75 did the fast-roping scenes and were extras; John Collette, a Ranger Specialist during the actual battle served as a stunt performer.

Most of Black Hawk Down was photographed in the cities of Rabat and Salé in Morocco; the Task Force Ranger base sequences were filmed at Kénitra. The film features no Somali actors.

In order to keep the film at a manageable length, 100 key characters in the book were condensed down to 39. A large number of the actors who played American soldiers are actually from different countries. The list includes: Ewan McGregor (Scottish), Eric Bana (Australian), Kim Coates (Canadian), Ioan Gruffudd (Welsh), Ewen Bremner (Scottish), Jason Isaacs (English), Zeljko Ivanek (Slovenian), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Danish), Tom Hardy (English), Matthew Marsden (English) and Orlando Bloom (English). When Orlando Bloom auditioned for the role, he informed the casting directors that he knew what it was like to break his back (as he had done so only a couple of years before when climbing out on a drain pipe from a friend's house). His character in this movie breaks his back after falling from the helicopter.

On the last day of their week long Army Ranger orientation at Fort Benning, the actors who portrayed the Rangers received a letter which had been anonymously slipped under their door. The letter thanked them for all their hard work, and asked them to "tell our story true", signed with the names of the Rangers who died in the Mogadishu firefight.

The film features soldiers wearing helmets with their last names on them. Although this was an inaccuracy, Ridley Scott felt it was necessary to have the helmets to help the audience to distinguish between the characters because they all look the same once the uniforms are on.

The set was constantly bothered by stray dogs running into shot. Ridley Scott kept them in because he liked the authentic feel of their presence. Eight dogs were adopted by various members of the production and were eventually brought back to the US with them.

At Bakara Market, a Moroccan street sign is revealed which depicts 'Tidarine Street' in Arabic and French.

Release

Box office

Black Hawk Down had a limited release in four theaters on 28 December 2001 in order to be eligible for the 2001 Oscars. It earned $179,823 in its first weekend, averaging $44,956 per theater. On 11 January 2002 the release expanded to 16 theaters and continued to do well with a weekly gross of $1,118,003 and an average daily per theater gross of $9,982. On 18 January 2002 the film had its wide release, opening at 3,101 theaters and earning $28,611,736 in its first wide release weekend to finish first at the box office for the weekend. Opening on the Martin Luther King holiday, the film grossed $5,014,475 on the holiday of Monday, 21 January 2002 for a 4-day weekend total of $33,628,211. Only Titanic (1997 film) had previously grossed more money over the Martin Luther King holiday weekend. Black Hawk Down went on to finish first at the box office during its first three weeks of wide release. When the film was pulled from theatres on 14 April 2002 after its 15th week, it had grossed $108,638,745 domestically and $64,350,906 overseas for a worldwide total of $172,989,651.[1]

Critical response

The film received many positive reviews from mainstream critics. Empire gave it a verdict of "ambitious, sumptuously framed, and frenetic, Black Hawk Down is nonetheless a rare find of a war movie which dares to turn genre convention on its head". It has a 76% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes,[4] and a normalized rating of 74 on Metacritic.[5]

Accolades

Won

Nominated

Controversy

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.[6]

In a radio interview, Brendan Sexton, an actor in the movie, said that the version of the film which made it onto theater screens was significantly different from the one recounted in the original script. According to him, many scenes asking hard questions of the U.S. troops with regard to the violent realities of war, the true purpose of their mission in Somalia, etc., were cut out.[7] Sexton wrote an article in 2002 where he maintained that Black Hawk Down failed to explain the reasons behind the Somali population's opposition to the U.S. military presence in their country:

The Somalis are portrayed as if they don't know what's going on, as if they're trying to kill the Americans because they — like all other "evildoers" — will do anything to bite the hand that feeds them. But the Somalis aren't a stupid people. In fact, many were upset because the U.S. military presence propped up people tied to the old, corrupt Barre regime.[8]

In a review featured in The New York Times, film critic Elvis Mitchell expressed dissatisfaction at the film's "lack of characterization", and noted the film "reeks of glumly staged racism".[9] Owen Gliberman 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[10] but 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.[11]

Critics also charge that the African American actors chosen to play the Somalis in the film do not in the least bit resemble the racially unique peoples of the Horn of Africa nor does the language they communicate in sound like the Afro-Asiatic tongue spoken by the Somali people.[12][unreliable source?] The abrasive manner in which lines are delivered and the film's inauthentic vision of Somali culture, they add, fails to capture the tone, mannerisms and spirit of actual life in Somalia.[13]

Shortly after the film's release, author Mark Bowden, who wrote the screenplay for Black Hawk Down, told a newspaper that the character played by actor Ewan McGregor is based on Ranger John Stebbins, "but Pentagon officials asked his name be changed in an attempt to keep his shame [a 30-year sentence for sodomy and rape of his 6-year-old daughter[citation needed]] a secret". Instead, the name was changed due to "creative reasons".[14][unreliable source?][15]

Malaysian military officials whose troops were involved in the fighting have raised complaints regarding the film's accuracy. Retired Brigadier-General Abdul Latif-Ahmed, 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, while Malaysian troops were "mere bus drivers to ferry them out".[16]

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:

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 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.[17]

Richard Dowden, director of the Royal African Society, claims that the film inaccurately portrays the trapped Rangers protecting a woman. According to Dowden, in reality "the soldiers had seized her and her children and held them in front of them with guns to their heads as human shields to try to escape."[18]

Soundtrack

Main article: Black Hawk Down (soundtrack)

References

  1. ^ a b "Black Hawk Down (2001)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2007-10-26.
  2. ^ "Text of the decision from USCourts.gov". Retrieved 2011-02-21.
  3. ^ Turner, Megan (2001-11-18). "War-Film "Hero" Is A Rapist". New York Post. Retrieved 2006-12-10.
  4. ^ Black Hawk Down Movie Reviews, Pictures. Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2009-11-08.
  5. ^ "Black Hawk Down Reviews, Ratings, Credits". Metacritic. Retrieved 2009-11-08.
  6. ^ "Black Hawk Rising". Retrieved 2011-02-21.
  7. ^ "As "Black Hawk Down" Director Ridley Scott Is Nominated for An Oscar, An Actor in the Film Speaks Out Against Its Pro-War Message". Retrieved 2011-02-21.
  8. ^ "What's Wrong With Black Hawk Down". Retrieved 2011-02-21.
  9. ^ Mitchell, Elvis (2001-12-28). "Mission Of Mercy Goes Bad In Africa". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-04-26.
  10. ^ "Sean Burns: "Ridley Scott and Jerry Bruckheimer's latest is racist crap"". Retrieved 2011-02-21.
  11. ^ "Defending Black Hawk Down". FoxNews.com. 2002-01-15. Retrieved 2011-02-21.
  12. ^ ""Black Hawk Down" Movie - A Hoax? Talking Point". Retrieved 2011-02-21.
  13. ^ "Somalis flock to bootleg "Black Hawk"". Retrieved 2011-02-21.
  14. ^ ""Black Hawk Down" Honors Rapist". Retrieved 2011-02-21.
  15. ^ "Black Hawk Down accused of airbrushing history". The Guardian. London. 2001-12-21. Retrieved 2010-05-09.
  16. ^ "Jingoism jibe over Black Hawk Down". BBC News. 2002-01-21. Retrieved 2010-01-01.
  17. ^ Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire: A Memoir, (Free Press: 2006), p. 76
  18. ^ Richard Dowden, Africa, Altered States, Ordinary Miracles, (Portobello: 2008), p. 114
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