Black Hawk Down: Difference between revisions

''[[Black Hawk Down]]'' (2001) is a war film produced by [[Jerry Bruckheimer]] and directed by [[Ridley Scott]] and based on the book of the same title by Mark Bowden. It depicts the Battle of Mogadishu, a raid integral to the United States' effort to capture Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. The movie features [[Josh Hartnett]], Tom Sizemore, [[Ewan McGregor]], Eric Bana, Ewen Bremner, William Fichtner, [[Sam Shepard]], Jason Isaacs, Glenn Morshower, and Orlando Bloom.

 

In a raid, a task force of Delta Force soldiers, Army Rangers, and Special Operations Aviation Regiment attempt to capture two of Mohammed Farah Aidid's senior subordinates in the Bakaara Market neighborhood of Mogadishu. The mission is led by Major General William F. Garrison and was supposed to take no more than one hour. The extraction by the Delta team is successful, but the Somali militia, armed with RPGs, shot down two Black Hawk helicopters, and the resulting rescue extends the mission to over 15 hours.

* [[Anachronism Stew]]: Oakley Juliet sunglasses which weren't introduced until 1999.

** The [[John Grisham]] novel ''[[The Client]]'' was not in paperback until the year after the movie is set.

** Having high flying oversight from Orion P-3C spy planes: awesome. Having ''no'' radio communication with those planes: bad. The delay caused by getting the directions from the planes, to the Joint Operations Center, to the C-2 officers in the helicopter was more than a minute, and ended up resulting in the ''wrong directions'' (they were trying to direct the convoy to the wrong crash site).

* [[Awesome Yet Practical]]: Two Delta Force marksmen kill many times their number of enemy forces on their own with only semiautomatic rifles and pistols, before one takes a random shot through the forehead, after which the other is finally overwhelmed.

* [[Bald of Awesome]]: Captain Steele... the movie version, anyway. Opinions vary as to his real-life counterpart. (In the book, Delta SFC Paul Howe had a poor view of the Rangers, but especially of CPT Steele.)

* [[Bang Bang BANG]]: Averted. The sound of the minigun is accurately portrayed.

* [[Blasting It Out of Their Hands]]: Happens to Gallentine, who loses a thumb in the process (it's only hanging on by shred of skin).

* [[Bulletproof Vest]]: Played brutally straight. Armored plating only works if you wear it.

* [[Desk Jockey]]: As the above shows, Grimes.

* [[Deadpan Snarker]]: McKnight.

'''McKnight''': *stares blankly* Well, ''shoot back!'' }}

* [[Death From Above]]: The MH-6 Little Bird helicopters, which make gun and rocket attacks that kill literally dozens of militia.

* [[Gone Horribly Wrong]]: The mission was supposed to last thirty minutes.

* [[Gorn]]: All the time, considering the fact that war isn't pretty.

** One soldier, in the middle of a firefight, comes across a fellow soldiers severed hand, and immediately blinks out of combat mode as he wonders what to do with it (he eventually stuffs it into a pocket). In the [[Real Life]] incident, the soldier knew who's hand it was, and put it into the pocket of the soldier that had lost it, causing a bit of a ruckus back at the base later when an unprepared nurse found it and freaked out.

* [[Gunship Rescue]]: During the gun battle at night, where AH-6J Little Birds were called in to provide fire support -- shredding any unfortunate Somalis caught in their sights.

* [[Heroic Sacrifice]]: The two Delta operators that go to help Durant take him from the chopper and place him in a nearby building, then go back to defend the chopper. This doesn't make much sense until you realize they didn't have enough men to guard the building. They were drawing the militia fighters away from Durant by using themselves as bait.

** In the book, it becomes significantly more clear that they knew ''exactly'' what they were doing by going in on foot. They didn't have a chance of extraction by helicopter, and they were aware that the pilot (Durant) was unable to move fast enough to be extracted by foot. They went in knowing that there was a good chance they would be overrun by the hundreds of militia members they could see from their vantage point in the helicopter, and they ''did it anyway''. There's a reason they were both awarded the Medal of Honor for their actions.

* [[Hollywood History]]: While the movie is based on a true story, the movie removes any references that Malaysian Peace Keepers were also involved in the rescue of the downed Black Hawks. This angered the Malaysian government since the movie was implying the Malaysian did nothing when in reality Malaysian soldiers both fought and died together with their American counterparts in that rescue operation.

* [[Ho Yay]]: [[Invoked]] by two Blackhawk pilots as argue over the legitimacy of the word "Limo" [[Cavemen vs. Astronauts Debate|in a game of Scrabble]]:

'''''Durant''': Yeah. Promises.'' }}

** An inevitable [[Truth in Television]] if you hang out with military personnel long enough. It has been described as "A very homoerotic game of chicken."

* [[Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy]]: The Somalis keep their AKs on full-auto and tend to not aim all that much, whereas Delta Force and the Rangers take decently aimed single shots most of the time. The sheer number of Somalis makes this "spray & pray" strategy more effective than it would be otherwise.

* [[Instant Death Bullet]]: Heavily subverted. The bullets used by both Delta and the Rangers were a new "penetrator" type, essentially light armor-piercing rounds. They had a particular tendency to ''not'' kill people who were hit by them, as the bullet wounds ended up being [[Just a Flesh Wound|through-and-throughs]], instead of the rapidly expanding or tumbling effects usually observed by full-metal-jacket rounds. According to the book, it was extremely common to shoot three guys, only for two of them to get up and drag the third out of the combat zone.

** 18 Americans died in the actual conflict. The epilogue lists one more person

** Note to self: Don't fuck with Delta. (According to the book, the two Delta marksmen may have personally killed as many as twenty to twenty-four Somali gunmen with their rifles and pistols before being overrun.)

*** Though Delta and the Rangers were responsible for a number of kills, they also had significant air support (Black Hawks with gatling guns and, later,the Little Bird gun runs that accounted for significant portions of the damage. Even the M2 machine guns on the HMMVW's were responsible for heavy Somalian casualties: crew-served weapons are responsible for most fatalities in modern warfare.

* [[Kinda Busy Here]]:

'''Sgt. Struecker''': ''(Racing his Humvee down a city street while bullets ricochet all around) I don't wanna talk about it right now, Colonel. I'm busy!'' }}

* [[Loads and Loads of Characters]]: For a two hour long movie.

* [[Manly Tears]]: Near the end of the film, one of the Deltas is loading up to go back out to try to rescue those still out there (such as Durant) and Eversmann starts to do the same only to be stopped by the Delta who tells him he works better alone. As the Delta soldier walks away, the stress of battle finally hits Eversmann and he weeps visibly.

* [[A Million Is a Statistic]]: The massive amount of civilian casualties mentioned in the book are only depicted in the film by a single shot of a man carrying his dead child.

* [[Military Maverick]]: Special Forces units. The book details how these could cause friction with more conventional units... which ended up having some negative consequences in the field.

** [[Foreshadowing|Foreshadowed]], of course, by Grimes' rant in the beginning of the movie about how he has spent his entire career in the Rangers making coffee during various important military campaigns. Despite being involved in the worst of the fighting, Grimes is still making coffee during the Battle of Mogadishu.

*** "Grimesy, you are squared away!"

* [[No One Gets Left Behind]]: The movie's [[Catch Phrase]]: "Leave No Man Behind."

* [[Not So Different]]: One of the Somali commanders tells the POW Mike Durant that about Americans and Somalis. According to him, despite the differences of the political systems of USA and Somalia, they're both militaristic nations who use violence to solve their problems, and they'll always use it, no matter how much they both want peace.

** The Quick Reaction Force is portrayed this way in the movie, when, upset that they were not informed of the raid, it takes them a little longer than it should to get all their forces assembled. In [[Real Life]], they ''were'' informed of the raid, and were scrambling to get to ''both'' crash sites the second they were called (which was mere minutes after the first crash), but due to the Somalian Militia blocking off roads and setting up ambushes, they had to go all the way ''around'' the city, which took several hours. They were truly distressed that they weren't able to get to either crash site sooner.

* [[Oh Crap]]: The look on the Aidid militia officer's face when he realizes {{spoiler|Delta has commandeered his recoilless rifle and are pointing it at him.}}

* [[Only a Flesh Wound]]: Averted, as a man who got shot in the leg dies painfully (both for him and the viewers, [[Nightmare Fuel|the scene they try to stop him from bleeding out from the femoral artery]] is [[Nausea Fuel|really graphic]]).

* [[Pistol Whip]]: One of the Somalis that captures Durant uses his AK-47 as a makeshift club and smacks him across the face with the stock.

* [[Running Gag]]: Grimes keeps getting shot with RPGs. Okay, so it's not a ''funny'' running gag. (In the actual campaign, Stebbins really did find himself near far too many explosions. Each time, his squadmates though he was done, but each time he managed to survive somehow. He eventually makes it out of the combat zone with a badly injured foot.)

* [[Scenery Gorn]]

* [[Steel Ear Drums]]: Averted. One character is left mostly deaf for the rest of the movie after a 5.56mm M249 squad automatic weapon is fired from within a foot from his head.

** Subverted at another point in the film; Grimes barely dodges a Somali RPG and is knocked off his feet and partially buried by the dirt churned up by the blast. When a Delta digs him up, the viewer sees things from Grimes' perspective, including temporarily distorted audio due to the blast momentarily deafening him.

* [[Stock Shout Out]]: It's hard to find a First Person Shooter in a modern setting that doesn't have a reference to this movie somewhere.

* [[Title Drop]]: "Black Hawk down, we have a Black Hawk down."

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:The Nineties]]

[[Category:Ridley Scott]]

[[Category:Films of the 2000s]]