Blackhawk down

[Warin]

Ok, I havent seen this movie, but it's coming out on DVD Tuesday.

Anyone out there seen it? ***How was it? Is it worth buying on DVD?

I've read a lot of the reviews at IMDB... but I want the opinions of the folks around here, as most of you seem to be of a militaristic bent (go figure) and might give me a more objective idea of whether I want to spend my hard earned dollars on it.

EDIT:
I've read the book. I know the story. I guess I just wonder if hollywood has killed it in their typical fashion.

[Jester983]

Yes it was a great movie. Two words:

BUY IT.

I know im going to.

What was nice was, it didnt have any crappy love story or anything. It was just straight and to the point. Sorry I cant give a better description. Its been awhile since i saw it.

[Mister Frag]

A friend who is in the entertainment industry received the DVD in a promotion package for the upcoming Oscar voting, and absolutely loved the movie.

She read the book, and saw the movie on the big screen when it was playing, but the video and sound quality of the DVD (given the right hardware, of course) made it a completely different experience for her. She said that watching Blackhawk Down on DVD was intense and exhausting. She offered to let me borrow the DVD, but I declined -- I have my own on order.

[timmy]

BUY IT, its a great movie, and im reading the book now. Ive already ordered a copy.

[Warin]

When I was looking at the cast list, I couldnt find John Stebbins. He was one of my favourite characters in the book, because he really was just an ordinary guy (on of the clerks) who did a lot of heroic things. He wons a silver star. If you watched the movie but didnt read the book, it's Obi W...I mean..Ewan McGregor's chaacter Grimes.

They changed it because Stebbins is in Leavenworth for some nasty stuff

Shame..but it does show the human side of things is sometimes pretty damn fubar.

[Mister Frag]

FYI, from The Irish Times. What the article doesn't mention is that the 12-year-old girl was his own daughter. Sick...

Another Hollywood war epic - another blow to truth

Hollywood is in gung-ho mood after September 11th and war in Afghanistan. But its latest war offering, Black Hawk Down, is another factual travesty, suggests Ed Power

In the sleek new war movie Black Hawk Down, Scottish heart throb Ewan McGregor plays real-life American John "Stebby" Stebbins, a former soldier today serving a 30-year sentence for raping a 12-year-old girl.

Stebbins was a member of the elite Ranger unit that led a disastrous October 1993 raid in the war-ravaged Somali capital, Mogadishu, an event recounted with dazzling aplomb in the film. Dispatched to seize two henchmen of tribal warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid, US troops blundered into a calamitous street battle that claimed the lives of 18 Americans and at least 500 Somalis.

The debacle continues to cast a pall over US foreign policy. Television footage of bloodied marines dragged naked through the streets of Mogadishu revived the spectre of Vietnam and rang a death knell for the nascent Clinton administration's interventionist leanings.

But these complexities are barely touched upon in the film, a glittery, callow feature that casts its American protagonists as rag tag mama's boys and slurs Somalis as Kalashnikov-toting sub-humans possessed of an insatiable lust for carnage.

Director Ridley Scott, whose CV includes Gladiator and Hannibal, says he set out to relay honestly the horrors of modern war. His claim to authenticity rings hollow, however - the movie breezily blurs the facts, conflating two distinct phases of the Somali operation.

Should we be surprised at the film's failure to address these complexities? After all, Hollywood has cultivated a long tradition of fudging history and portraying foreigners as one-dimensional cannon fodder. And although Scott can paint a memorable image - his Blade Runner remains one of the most haunting movies of the 1980s - he is a hopelessly naďve filmmaker, favouring pat - if visually deft - morality fables over the grey ambiguities of real life.

Scott's crime is to betray his source material. Black Hawk Down is based on a 1999 book of the same name by Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Mark Bowden. Bowden's original Inquirer articles suggested American military chiefs underestimated the Somalis' stomach for a fight and displayed dangerous arrogance by unleashing in broad daylight Rangers and Delta Force units trained for night combat.

Understandably, Somalis are rather irked. They describe the movie as a psychological setback for the country.

What John Stebbins, locked away in Fort Leavenworth military prison, Kansas, makes of all the attention is anybody's guess. It is unlikely he will even recognise himself on screen. To avoid upsetting audiences and affronting the military, Scott changed the character's name, remoulding him into a loveable - and resolutely straight-up - kook.

As ever in war movies, the first casualty is truth.

[DayGlow]

Actually the guy who raped the girl was removed from the movie. So the reviewer has no point there. As for the rest of the review it seems the reviewer is bent on American bashing. (please not that I'm not an American, but Canadian)

First off the movie was in production long before Sept 11, so it wasn't a reaction to it.

The movie isn't about the politics or if the action was right or wrong, but about how the individual men in the situation rised above it with bravery to survive. That's what I got from the movie: That warfare is hell and people do extrodinary things in the face of death. The Americans refused to leave anyone behind and I repect them for that. Should they have been there? I don't know, you can't win that arguement.

And how is this a blow to the truth? The warlords were hording the foot and people were dying. Everyone would shame the Americans if they looked away, and when they did get involved, again they did it wrong. But my question is, could anyone do it right? I don't think so. As for a tatical battle, the Americans slaughtered the Somilies. 500+ to 18. That's a lopsided victory if I ever saw one.

As for portaying the Somalis in a bad light. Well the warlords and their men were/are evil. They put their own power ahead of the lives of their own people. I don't feel sorry for a single person that decided to pick up a rifle against the American force.

I don't think the Americans are perfect, but for a country as powerful as it is, I think they are doing a good job in a area that they cannot win, or anyone else could either. The world's policeman position sucks, but everyone looks to the Americans whenever something happens and when they react everyone is against it. Well make up your mind then.

COLINMAN

[Satchel]

Although i really do like the movie for it´s camera and SFX action, Blackhawk Down just as nearly any war-movie, was also a very one sided, simplistic and glorifying approach to what happened in Somalia, with lots of author interpretion, like the actions of 2 Delta´s, Shughard and Gordon setting up an perimeter around the 2nd crashsite.
Many things that were done or said actually by several people, were projected onto a single actor in the movie, to help identification and development of that characters storyline.
There are lots of "not so good" things left outside the movie, to give the army a smoother, more professional and heroic look.
If they would have made everything authentic, i doubt this movie would have gotten military technical advisory, or further than the storyboard.

Here is a good i-net resource :
http://www.nightstalkers.com/history/9.html
http://www.nightstalkers.com/tfranger/blackhawkdown/

Another point of view:
http://www.anti-state.com/davidson/davidson2.html

But it´s one great war movie, great excitement watching it.

[MDRZulu]

Shugart and Gordon did set up a perimeter, yes they died but Durant was with them and awake the whole time and I have seen him say that they did on a TV show. Not only that they might have been recorded the whole time from the P-3's and recon helicopters flying up high.

[Satchel]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (MDRZulu @ June 08 2002,05:04)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Shugart and Gordon did set up a perimeter, yes they died but Durant was with them and awake the whole time and I have seen him say that they did on a TV show. Not only that they might have been recorded the whole time from the P-3&#39;s and recon helicopters flying up high.[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
In the back of Blackhawk Super 62, Goffena had, in addition to his two crew chiefs, three commandos: snipers Randy Shughart, Gary Gordon and Brad Hallings. With Somalis closing in, he knew Durant&#39;s downed crew wouldn&#39;t last long. They were an air crew, not professional ground fighters like the boys.

Goffena&#39;s crew gunners and the snipers were now picking off armed Somalis. Goffena would drop down low, and the wash of his propellers would force the thickening crowds back. But the men with RPGs were slower to take cover, and his snipers were picking them off.

Goffena also noticed that every time he dropped down now, he was drawing more fire. He heard the ticking of bullets poking through the thin metal walls of the airframe. A couple of times he saw a glowing arc where a round would hit one of his rotor blades, which would spark and trace a bright line as the blade moved.

Goffena&#39;s Blackhawk and other helicopter gunships were holding the crowds back. Goffena and the other circling pilots worked the radio, pleading for immediate help. They were repeatedly assured that a rescue by the hurriedly assembled ground convoy was imminent.

But Goffena&#39;s air commander, realizing that it was taking too long to get the new column up and moving, approved Goffena&#39;s request to put two of his helicopter&#39;s three commandos on the ground. The idea was for them to give first aid, set up a perimeter, and help Durant and his crew hold off the Somalis until the arrival of a rescue force.

This was not a hopeless mission. One or two properly armed, well-trained soldiers could hold off an undisciplined enemy indefinitely. Shughart and Gordon were experts at killing and staying alive. They were career soldiers trained to get hard, ugly things done. Gordon had enlisted at 17; his wife and children lived near Fort Bragg, N.C. Shughart was an outdoorsman from Western Pennsylvania who loved his Dodge truck and his hunting rifles.

When the crew chief gave Gordon the word that he and Shughart were going in, Gordon grinned and gave an excited thumbs-up. Goffena made a low pass at a small clearing, using his rotor wash to knock down a fence and blow away debris. He held a hover at about five feet, and the two boys jumped.

Shughart got tangled on the safety line connecting him to the chopper and had to be cut free. Gordon took a spill as he ran for cover. Shughart stood motioning with his hands, indicating their confusion. They were crouched in a defensive posture in the open.

Goffena dropped the copter down low and leaned out the window, pointing the way. A crew chief popped a small smoke marker out the side in the direction of Durant&#39;s helicopter. Shughart and Gordon ran to the smoke. The last thing the crew chiefs saw as the Blackhawk pulled away was both men signaling thumbs-up.

Shughart and Gordon were calm. They reached in and lifted Durant out of the craft gently, one taking his legs and the other grabbing his torso, as if they had all the time in the world. They set him down by a tree.

He was not in great pain. Durant was in a perfect position to cover the whole right side of the aircraft with his skinny-popper. Behind him the front of his aircraft was wedged tightly against a tin wall, closing off any easy approach from that side.

He could see that his crew chiefs had taken the worst of the crash. They didn&#39;t have the shock absorbers in back. He watched them lift Bill Cleveland from the fuselage. He had blood all over his pants, and was talking but making no sense.

Then Gordon and Shughart moved to the other side of the helicopter to help Tommy Field, the other crew chief. Durant couldn&#39;t see what was happening. He assumed they were attending to Field and setting up a perimeter, or looking for a way to get them out, or perhaps looking for a place where another helicopter could set down and load them up.

Somalis were starting to poke their heads around the corner on Durant&#39;s side of the copter. He squeezed off a round, and they dropped back. His gun kept jamming, so he would eject the round, and the next time it would shoot properly. Then it would jam again.

He could hear more shooting from the other side of the airframe. It still hadn&#39;t occurred to him that Shughart and Gordon were the entire rescue force. There was no big rescue team - other than the emergency ground convoy, which was still forming at the airport base two miles away.

Durant also did not know, none of them did, that only 110 yards or so away, pilots Keith Jones and Karl Maier were waiting. The same team that had set the Little Bird down near the first crash site to help Cliff Wolcott&#39;s downed crew had now set their helicopter down again - to help Durant and his crew.

Jones and Maier were aiming their weapons at alleyways leading to the clearing, expecting a crowd of Somalis to show up any second, and hoping that Shughart and Gordon would arrive with Durant and his crew. They were eager to load everybody up and hustle out of there.

Goffena, circling overhead, had seen Shughart and Gordon lift Durant and then Cleveland and Field out of the fuselage. He knew they weren&#39;t going to be able to carry them to where Jones&#39; Little Bird was waiting.

He got on the radio and explained to Jones and Maier that the boys had set up a perimeter around Durant&#39;s Blackhawk. They had badly wounded crew members. They could not make it to the Little Bird. They were going to have to hang on until the ground force arrived.

After waiting on the ground about five minutes, Maier and Jones reluctantly asked for permission to leave and refuel. The Little Bird was running low, and they were vulnerable. They lifted off, leaving the Americans at crash site two to their fate.

He could hear firing on the other side of the helicopter. He knew Ray Frank, his copilot, was hurt but alive. And somewhere were the two boys and his crew chief, Tommy Field. He wondered if Tommy was OK. He figured it was only a matter of time before the ground vehicles showed up to take them out.

Then he heard one of the guys - it was Gary Gordon - shout that he was hit. Just a quick shout of anger and pain. He didn&#39;t hear the voice again.

The other guy, Randy Shughart, came back around to Durant&#39;s side of the bird.

"Are there weapons on board?&#39;&#39; he asked.

The crew chiefs carried M-16s. Durant told him where they were kept, and Shughart stepped into the craft, rummaged around and returned with both rifles. He handed Durant Gordon&#39;s weapon, a CAR-15 automatic rifle loaded and ready to fire. He didn&#39;t say what had happened to Gordon.

"What&#39;s the support frequency on the survival radio?&#39;&#39; Shughart asked.

It was then, for the first time, that it dawned on Durant that they were stranded. He felt a twist of alarm in his gut. If Shughart was asking how to set up communications, it meant he and Gordon had come in on their own. They were the entire rescue team. And Gordon had just been shot&#33;

Durant explained standard procedure on the survival radio to Shughart. He said there was a channel Bravo, and he listened while Shughart called out. Shughart asked for immediate help, and was told that a reaction force was en route. Then Shughart took the weapons and moved back around to the other side of the helicopter.

Durant felt panic closing in now. He had to keep the Somalis away. He could hear them talking behind a wall, so he fired in that direction. It startled him because he had been firing single shots, but this new weapon was set on burst. The voices behind the wall stopped. Then two Somalis tried to climb over the nose end of the copter. He fired at them, and they jumped back. He didn&#39;t know whether he had hit them.

A man tried to climb over the wall, and Durant shot him. Another came crawling from around the corner with a weapon, and Durant shot him, too.

Suddenly there was a mad fusillade on the other side of the helicopter that lasted for about two minutes. He heard Shughart shout in pain. The shooting stopped.