Black Hawk Down

Boasting the least enlightened representation of the inhabitants of ‘darkest Africa’ since Zulu, it isn’t exactly easy to watch the crash-and-bang-fest that is Black Hawk Down without the words ‘war’ and ‘propaganda’ springing to mind.

Based on the stunningly-named ‘Operation Restore Hope’ mission mounted in Somalia by US troops in 1993, it’s far more subtle in its flag-waving than the contemporaneous Behind Enemy Lines, but no less sinister for that.

The pitch: during 1993 in Mogadishu, American troops commanded by Major General Garrison (Sam Shepard) attempt to capture a Somali warlord (Mohamad Farah Aidid)’s senior advisers.

The mission, however, is thrown into chaos when two US Black Hawk helicopters are shot down with tragic consequences. Director Ridley Scott – and his producer, the dread Jerry Bruckheimer – have claimed that Black Hawk Down is ‘the opening half-hour of Saving Private Ryan, except for two hours’.

While on paper this might sound buzzy enough, in practise it’s not quite the virtuoso film-making that Spielberg can manage, though it’s undoubtedly an impressive visual onslaught. In order to facilitate the emphasis on spectacle, narrative and characterisation are almost completely sacrificed – and while there is some genuine sense of a stand-off for the movie’s final hour, it’ s rendered as an undifferentiated mish-mash of special effects and loud bangs.

Aside from narrative incoherence, even as stock characters go (Bana is the macho posturing one, McGregor the military clerk suddenly caught up in action, Hartnett the newly-promoted sergeant), so little care or attention has been paid to the script that the GIs here barely even qualify as one-dimensional. Indeed, for all the film’s apparent attempts at conveying the horrors of war, Black Hawk Down has so little humanity that it’s impossible to care what happens to anyone here.

Even more problematic are the film’s ideological underpinnings. The Somalians are portayed as being unspeakable savages, and the film makes a point of referring to the enemies’ Islamic faith. Certainly, it’s not the first time Hollywood has played the ‘filthy infidel’ card (The Siege, Rules of Engagement) or released a movie which might have been more snugly titled Operation Kill Darkie, but the timing could hardly be more guaranteed to annoy those not automatically converted to the beauty of the global market system.

Hannibal may have pulled out all the stops in its determination to gross out the audience, but with Black Hawk Down, Ridley Scott has conjured up an infinitely sicker affair.