Black Hawk Down Analysis

Black Hawk Down Movie Analysis

Matthew Hunter

February 9, 2015

Victor Armenta

        Black Hawk Down by Ridley Scotts is one of the best war films I have read so far.  Scott tells a story concerning U.S. military raid went terribly wrong when some hopeful plans ran into resistance that was unexpected.  It is detailing on a mission inside Somali on October 3, 1993. According to the film director, around 70 people were wounded, and eighteen lost their lives. Within few days, Bill Clinton had to pull out his troops who were on a humanitarian mission. On the other hand, 300,000 Somalis lost their lives due to starvation.  On this date, about a hundred of United State Army Rangers who were commanded by Captain Steele were taken to Mogadishu. Their mission was based on capturing the two top lieutenants belonging to Somali warlord. This was disastrous because it lead to a large firefight between the Somali gunmen and the Rangers. It leads to destruction of the two Black Hawk helicopters from U.S.  The film mainly focuses on the heroic efforts of different Rangers who wanted to get to the downed black hawk (Eberwein, 2004).

        The director mixes a range of camera movements, film speed, camera angle, music, and tone to throw audiences into fighting between the two sides. Ridley places the film viewers into boosts of army, rangers Delta Forced members, and other major military positions. This enables the viewer to experience nightmare so as to realize what these soldiers are experiencing. William Arnold stated "Black Hawk Down is a terrific ‘trip' movie that – like Private Ryan – plops us right in the middle of a harrowing combat situation, and forces us to ‘experience' it for ourselves, as if we were one of the jangled participants" (Eberwein,2004 pg11). If you look at the opening scene, "The start" Hans Zimmer-man, a great composer used music that has an ethnic style. This music is related to African setting, and it causes uneasiness in the viewers. This feeling of uneasiness is taken further by the tone that is blue in color which creates a gloomy mood. When continue watching you realize that the camera pass over a man who is mourning a lifeless body. This fades away immediately to a black screen. For this reason, it allows the audience to recognize the severity of the situation people passing through. The shallow of the camera mainly focuses on the people who are dying of starvation. This show how Mogadishu people are being affected by Mohamed Farrah Aidid. This causes a lot of sympathy from the viewers.

        The viewers here the off-screen sound of the helicopter. This means that the military from U.S has come to restore peace in Somali as well apprehend Aidid. The tempo of the music changes immediately after the helicopter appears. The new music assures all the viewers there is new hope. This is reflected by yellowish tone.

        The film main purpose can be said to be single-minded. This is because it wants to record all what was happening accurately as possible. When you go to the movie, you see that step by step, hour by hour, it reconstructs chain of events. The initial plan was to stage a surprise raid by ground force joined by helicopter- borne troops on a meeting of the two top lieutenants of Somali warlord.  It was taken as a straightforward mission that some of the rangers left behind their night-vision gear and canteens since they expected to go back in few hours. However, this did not happen