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Black Hawk Down takes its title from the book of the same name, by all accounts a solid piece of post-action reporting on an ill-fated American military expedition's attempt to capture high-ranking confidants of the warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed in downtown Mogadishu, the consequences of which soon led to a withdrawal of American troops from Somalia. The movie, in what I would consider one of its strengths, spends little time establishing lots of backstory or mulling over various geopolitical concerns. It's much less concerned with moralizing on whether the Americans should have been in Somalia, if they should have gone ahead with the mission, who was ultimately at fault for the lives lost, etc., and much more focused instead on showing the American troops involved and tracking the course of the action over the brutal twenty four hours or so of the engagement.
Taken on its own terms--as a movie about the hellish maelstrom of combat--Black Hawk Down is quite successful. In many ways, it reminded me of nothing so much as a two hour long CNN report, only with all the "good parts" left in (if blood, gore, exploding limbs, etc. can be considered the "good parts"; mileages will obviously vary here). Ridley Scott is nothing if not an accomplished stylist behind the camera, and he uses his skills to good effect here--the action is chaotic and visceral (sometimes literally). Performances by the actors are uniformly good: starting out as the type of tough young studs that are endemic to military units, then being thrown into the maw where their competence and reliance on training are a matter of life and death.
I suppose Black Hawk Down contains clues to what the filmakers really think about the broader picture, but its strongest message has to do with courage under fire and what well-trained troops are able to do when thrown into a shitstorm. As I said, I think that's a strength rather than a weakness. I don't want to be force-fed answers about global politics and America's place in the world, frankly. This movie allows viewers to watch a core snippet of an event and then come to their own conclusions about the larger answers. I appreciated that.
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