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What I appreciate most about writing this column is that I have the opportunity to catch up on movies that I have always meant to see. And most of the time after watching the film, I end up kicking myself for not bumping it to the front of my Netflix queue earlier. Case in point: Black Hawk Down.

With Zero Dark Thirty (one of my favorite films of the year) burning up the box office, I decided to look back at the 2001 war flick with a similar release trajectory that held fort at the top of the box office for three consecutive weeks.

A who’s who of Hollywood shares the silver screen in the impressive war thriller. Set in 1993, the movie is set-up with a wordy exposition on the civil war that has seized Somalia, claiming over 300,000 civilians as victim. Using famine as a weapon, warlord turned President Mohamed Farrah Aidid has been intercepting Red Cross food shipments and has declared war on the remaining UN Peacekeepers. In an attempt to takedown Aidid, U.S. Army Rangers and Delta Force soldiers (little is done to distinguish the groups) have a cut-and-dry plan to raid a meeting of Aidid’s top officials, kneecapping his power.

Forgoing canteens and night vision goggles, assuming they’d be back to the military base within hours, the mission turns into disaster with 19 soldiers killed, over 1,000 Somalis dead, countless injured, and two black hawks down. With the Rangers' oath to never leave a man behind, dead or alive, Black Hawk Down aptly captures the 18 horrifying hours of warfare that ensue.

Clocking in at 144 minutes, Black Hawk Down is essentially 100 minutes worth of non-stop war violence. Not for the queasy, director Ridley Scott takes an unflinching look at the bloody confusion war brings about. Criticized for not painting a balanced picture of the Somalis and having little characterization, I feel like the film gains strength in this aspect. Not a gung-ho, Michael Bay-like Pearl Harbor, Hawk is essentially what would look like if you dropped a camera in the battlefield and let it roll. I feel the film is bravely indecisive in terms of being for or against the failed operation (nicknamed ‘Irene’). The beginning scenes lay in enough characterization and the lack of dialogue on the battlefield helps add to the realistic confusion one would imagine war to feel like. Character is shown through bravery and heroic attempts to rescue fallen brethren in the middle of combat.

Essentially a bunch of vignettes pieced together through the battle, the soldiers are divided into saving those injured in the hawks that were shot down by Somali missiles; taking a soldier back to base who falls out of a helicopter resulting in a broken back; a pair of Rangers finding their way to the rest of the group after being mistakenly left behind; and then a final scene of the soldiers holding back the Somalis until daybreak when they can reach the UN Safe Zone.

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