Over the weekend I made the mistake of seeing the very long, very vivid, and very real movie “Black Hawk Down” with my girlfriend. The film is a true story about the Battle of Mogadishu, the longest sustained ground battle involving American soldiers since the Vietnam War.
The movie begins when 120 American soldiers are dropped into Mogadishu to abduct two Somalian warlords. The mission was supposed to take an hour, but it took a very wrong turn after two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down. The mission ended up taking 15 hours and resulted in 19 dead Americans and 73 wounded.
The movie is truly a guy’s movie, with Jerry Bruckheimer (producer) and Ridley Scott (director) presenting this battle using actors like Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Jeremy Piven, Sam Shepard, and Tom Sizemore. You will really get a feel for what it must have been like. The deaths are vivid, and when I walked out of the theater, I was exhausted, almost as if I was there with them. I kept saying to myself during the movie that this couldn’t have actually happened, that these men couldn’t have actually lived through that.
The movie is based on the book by Mark Bowden and is the best war movie I have seen in a long time. The movie really showed the heart of the men in the battle from both sides. It made me laugh and at the same time flinch. The premise of the movie and the battle was to leave no man behind, and this was no more true than at the end. While being shot at and killed, the soldiers spent two hours digging a man out of his helicopter, even though he was dead.
I highly recommend this movie to any action buff or movie lover. It is a good humanity story for all people; just make sure that your girlfriend has a tough stomach.