Blackhawk Down: A masterpiece for our generation
James R. Calhoun, The Peak

There are few movies that demand to be seen in the theatre; seeing the vast majority at home on video or DVD is more than adequate, and with the price of admission being what it is, it's a rare movie indeed that impels me to see it in theatre. That said, Black Hawk Down has just become one of my favourite movies and I'll have seen it three times by the time this goes to press.

Based on the book by Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down is the story of an American mission gone horribly wrong in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1993. The story, in a nutshell, is this: a local warlord named Aidid was preventing UN relief from reaching the starving masses and some 300,000 people had died as a result of starvation and a bloody civil war. The Americans were presented with the opportunity to capture several key players in Aidid's organization that were all at a meeting in the Olympic Hotel in Mogadishu. The Yanks dropped in Delta Force from Black Hawk Helos [special forces that are currently clearing caves in Afghanistan] to capture them, while U.S. Army Rangers secured the building perimeter. The mission was supposed to take a little more than an hour. What the Americans didn't count on was 5000 Somalis armed with AK47's and RPG's (rocket propelled grenades) pinning them down in an 18 hour fire-fight, or on them being able to shoot down two American helicopters.

The result was a group of men fighting for survival in a sort of modern day Rorke's Drift. Despite being badly out numbered and without support, the Americans laid a pretty heavy beating on the Somalis, but they lost 18 men in the process.

The movie tells this story with a surprising amount of accuracy, and director Ridley Scott (Gladiator) avoids the rah-rah, mom and apple pie, god bless America b.s. that so many U.S. war films fall prey to. This could be the tale of any group of soldiers, anywhere, and the movie is refreshingly free of the typical cliches, moral statements, and political spin. Black Hawk Down is simply a great story that is very well told. A word of warning, though, this is a gritty movie with a very high level of realism. I saw it with a group of a dozen soldiers on opening night and when it was finished we just sat there silent - that, I think, is the mark of a powerful film.

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