| Film Review | The American Historical Review, 107.4

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| Film Review | The American Historical Review, 107.4 | The History Cooperative

Film Review

Black Hawk Down. Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and Ridley Scott; directed by Ridley Scott; screenplay by Ken Nolan. 2001; color; 144 minutes. Distributed by Sony Pictures.

Still irate about what Jerry Bruckheimer and friends had done to the history of the Asian-Pacific War in Pearl Harbor (2001), I approached this film skeptically, although I knew Ridley Scott was the director and I had read Mark Bowden's excellent book upon which it is based. But Black Hawk Down is the most intense and graphic war film I have yet seen—it won the Academy Award for sound, as well as editing—and my initial reaction was that this amounted to a "docudrama" portraying American soldiers' heroism and sacrifices as accurately and honestly as possible. But was this action without deeper ethos? Does Scott offer, finally, spectacle over substance? 1

Then, as after Gladiator (2000), images and moments began returning. U.S. soldiers refer to the malnourished Somalis as "skinnies" while eating colorful, luscious heaps of food from their mess trays in their insulated American enclave. Their young faces earnestly accept the confident orders of General Garrison—well played by Sam Shepard—for a quick, "surgical" strike downtown to capture aides of the tribal strongman Aidid. They gird themselves for battle with individual weapons rivaling World War II tank armaments. They mount helicopters and wheeled vehicles, which roar out of base, seemingly invincible. . . .

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