“Black Hawk Down”

Staring: Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore, Eric 
Bana, Sam Shepard, Orlando Bloom, Ron Eldard and Jason Isaacs

Author’s note: I started working on this recap on the evening 
of November 3, 2004 when I wasn’t exactly in the best of 
moods. I will try my damndest to make this recap funny, but 
don’t be surprised if I sound a wee bit bitter once in a 
while.

Black screen. The words “based on an actual event” flash 
across the screen, so we know we will be forced to read the 
entire exposition and/or epilogue of the movie. And, sure 
enough, we start out with a quote from Plato: “Only the dead 
have seen the end of war.” That’s a nice quote. Remind me to 
stitch it on a pillow or something. You’ll have to excuse me 
if I’m a bit punchy because I am starting this recap 
immediately after finishing the ones for “Fiorile” and “Myth 
of Fingerprints” and I am thisclose to tearing my hair out and 
running around the house naked and covered in peanut butter.

Ethnic African (or possibly Middle Eastern knowing Hollywood’s 
accuracy when it comes to cultural differences) music starts 
playing. It is sung by a guy who sounds like he just got a 
small cactus shoved up his ass. We get lots of shots of dead 
bodies wrapped in white sheets. The time/date stamp tells us 
we are in Somalia and the year is 1992. Oh, and Somalia is in 
East Africa. This lesson in world geography has been brought 
to you by Ridley “Screw Historical Accuracy” Scott.

And now for the subtitled setup. “Years of warfare among rival 
clans causes famine on a biblical scale,” the subtitles 
declare solemnly over a montage of death and desolation. 
“300,000 civilians die of starvation. Mohammed Farrah Aidid, 
the most powerful of the warlords, rules the capital 
Mogadishu.” More dead bodies. “He seizes international food 
shipments...” You know what? I’m tired of recapping subtitled 
exposition already, can we just get to the dialogue? Blah blah 
20,000 US Marines blah blah “order is restored.” Snort. Who 
are we kidding? And I know all the gratuitous shots of dead 
bodies are supposed to make me feel something, but when one of 
them looks so obviously like a department store mannequin that 
it takes me completely out of the story before it’s even fully 
underway, that something ends up being mirth. At least I hope 
that was a mannequin and not actual stock footage of a real 
dead person or I’m really going to feel like an ass. 

“April 1993,” the subtitles drone on. “Aidid waits until the 
marines withdraw, and then declares war on the remaining U.N. 
peacekeepers.” Should that comma really have been in there? 
Did anyone proofread the subtitles? “In June...” All right, 
that’s it! Where’s the peanut butter? Blah blah American 
soldiers sent in to give Aidid the boot blah blah mission 
supposed to take three weeks (hah!) blah blah still going six 
weeks later (naturally). Helicopter blades woosh across the 
soundtrack and the movie title card appears. Great. We haven’t 
even gotten started yet and I’m already bored. This has got to 
be a new record.

Saturday, October 2, 1993. Do we really need such a detailed 
time stamp? A helicopter flies against a pretty sunrise 
backdrop. Josh Hartnett is on board. I feel compelled to point 
out the fact that Josh is from my home state of Minnesota as I 
have never been more proud to be a Minnesotan than I am now. 
We see random chaos below as the chopper flies overhead. The 
locals are attacking a food truck and fighting each other like 
animals who have been driven halfway to insanity by hunger. 
One of Aidid’s goons starts firing a machine gun and blood 
spatters the camera. Josh yelps frantically and the pilot 
tells him there’s nothing they can do.

A very well dressed goon, whom I shall henceforth refer to as 
the Head Aidid Goon – or HAG, if you will – picks up a 
bullhorn and starts yelling something in Somali. I can’t 
really tell you what he’s saying, though, as the genius in 
charge of the subtitles decided it would be a good idea to put 
small, white letters against a light background. Not that it 
really matters anyway. The helo pilot gets on the horn and 
asks for permission to engage. Negative. UN jurisdiction says 
they can’t get involved. Josh looks frustrated, judging by the 
maze of wrinkles forming on his forehead. The HAG shoots a 
finger “gun” at the retreating helicopter and laughs.

Cut to an open-air market in the middle of a housing 
development. Or something. Somewhere. The subtitles tell us 
this is Mogadishu – Bakara market. Eric Bana pushes a bicycle 
down a street crowded with people and various livestock. Oy 
the clichés. A jeep pulls up somewhere nearby and another well 
dressed goon climbs in. Eric stands against some sort of wall, 
adopts the air of a bouncer or secret service agent and 
mutters something unintelligible into his collar. He’s lucky 
he’s in a crowd because the only way he could’ve been more 
obvious is if he’d painted a bull’s eye on his forehead. He 
may actually rival Sydney Bristow for the title of Worst Spy 
Ever.

Anyway, the jeep starts driving down a deserted road with its 
entourage when helicopters swarm and a sniper shoots the hood, 
splattering oil all over the windshield. The jeep stalls and 
the soldiers spill out of the helicopter and knock on Well 
Dressed Goon’s window. “Call you back,” he calmly tells the 
person on the other end of his cell phone. Heh.

WDG is brought to an abandoned dump somewhere so the American 
general can have a chat with him. After some initial banter 
about cigars and the price of rice in China WDG says something 
about Aidid in an accent so thick that I can’t decipher the 
actual words. General America says they were trying to catch 
WDG, not Aidid. WDG hardly thinks he’s that important. General 
America points out that he sells guns to Aidid’s militia. 
“You’ve been here, what? Six weeks,” WDG asks tangentially. 
“Six weeks you are trying to catch the general. You put up 
reward posters...$25,000. What is this, gunfight at the K.O. 
Corral?” General America points out that it’s “O.K. Corral” 
but WDG doesn’t give two shits. “Do you think bringing me here 
would make him suddenly come to you? Make him more agreeable?” 
General America gets this look on his face like that’s exactly 
what he was hoping but he says that WDG knows where Aidid is 
and they’re not leaving Somalia until they find him. Just like 
the Americans didn’t leave Afghanistan until they’d found 
Osama bin Laden. Oh, wait... 

WDG tells General America not to assume just because he comes 
from a third world country with no running water that he is 
uneducated. “I do know something about history. See all this? 
It is simply shaping tomorrow. A tomorrow without a lot of 
Arkansas white boys [something something].” General America 
says he’s from Texas, actually. That’s your comeback? That is 
WEAK, dude! “You shouldn’t have come here,” WDG snaps. “This 
is civil war. This is *our* war, not yours.” “300,000 dead and 
counting,” General America weakly retorts. “That’s not war. 
That’s genocide.” And we’re supposed to believe that the 
Americans got involved because they just couldn’t stand by and 
let thousands of people die at the hands of their own 
government? Way to perpetuate the myth of the heroic do-gooder 
Americans. We didn’t even do that during World War Two. The 
Americans couldn’t have cared less about the Jews. And if you 
don’t believe me, I can give you a list of books that will 
back me up.

Excuse me for a moment while I wipe this foam from my mouth 
and try to get this runaway train back under control...

Oh, I guess the scene’s over now. That was one of only two 
scenes that made watching this movie worthwhile for me. 
Unfortunately, the other scene doesn’t come up for, like, two 
hours, so I’m gonna be as brief as possible from here on out. 
In fact, I’m gonna make a deal: I’ll continue to recap as 
normal until somebody says the title of the movie, at which 
point I will go to town on my fast-forward button and not let 
up until such time as I see fit. Okay? Good.

General America leaves the room and has a talk with his right-
hand man. Or whoever. Blah blah Iraq blah blah Washington blah 
blah situation is “fragile”. 

Mogadishu Airport. US Army Headquarters. Are we going to have 
time/date/location stamps on *every* scene in this movie? 
Helicopters are taking off. We get a visual introduction of a 
few more characters. And by “visual” I mean “we aren’t told 
their names”. In fact, I’m fairly certain that of the two 
dozen or so characters in this movie, we are only ever told 
the names of maybe six of them. For all I know, the other guys 
don’t even *have* names. Anyway, among the new guys are that 
creepy looking guy from “The Perfect Storm” and Orlando Bloom. 
Totally pointless banter ensues. I begin to wonder if 
something went wrong with the dialogue track suddenly because 
Orlando’s voice sounds kind of funny.

Cut to Orlando spewing character exposition at a guy typing 
away on a computer. Yeah, I don’t know who he is. I don’t know 
squat about military jobs or rankings or jargon. Ask me if I 
care. Anyway, it seems the reason Orlando’s voice sounds so 
strange is that he’s attempting to speak with an American 
accent. The key word here is “attempting” as in “not 
necessarily succeeding”. He says his name is Todd 
Blackbuuuuurne and his rank and serial number are I don’t give 
a flying fuck. Computer guy just glares at his computer 
silently. Kind of like I’m doing right now. “What’s it like,” 
Todd asks with what can only be the eager stupidity of youth. 
“Mogadishu... the fighting.” It’s a bloody nightmare that will 
fuck you up for the rest of your life, kid. Trust me. Computer 
Guy snits that nobody calls it Mogadishu around here, it’s 
just “Mog” or “the Mogs” or “fucking hellhole” and he doesn’t 
know, so shut up. Then he makes a snarky comment about Todd 
looking roughly twelve years old, so he’s going to explain 
something to him. Unfortunately, I have no idea what that 
something is because I totally lost track of the conversation 
at this point and blanked out. 

Todd gives Computer Guy his birth date and CG types “18” in 
the box that says “age”. Yeah, because he doesn’t look like 
he’s old enough to be graduating from college. Then, for no 
particular reason, Todd announces that he’s going to “kick 
some ass.” I’m not sure if that was meant to be serious or 
make him sound cool or something, but the fact that they got a 
guy who is new to the whole American accent thing and 
therefore sounds like he’s actually choking on the words to 
say it is making me laugh my ass off. 

A helicopter picks up Eric and his bicycle in the middle of 
the desert. What the hell is he doing there? Wasn’t he just in 
a crowded market square? Did he walk all the way out to the 
middle of nowhere to wait for extraction? Why am I worrying 
about this? More useless banter ensues. It would appear that 
Eric is also attempting an American accent. I think it’s 
supposed to be a southern drawl. Whatever it is it’s friggin’ 
hysterical.

Over at some bunkers or a firing range or something somewhere, 
Josh is ordering a bunch of guys around. Yeah, right. Like I’m 
going to believe that he’s old enough to be in charge here. 
Some guy approaches, Todd in tow, and calls “Lieutenant 
Eversman!” Todd says something about reporting for duty but 
I’m too busy laughing at how stupid he looks in that 
fisherman’s hat to really pay attention to what he’s saying at 
the moment. Eversman says Todd doesn’t report to *him*, but 
the guy he does report to isn’t here right now. “Can I leave 
him with you,” the other guy asks pleadingly. Heh. I’d like to 
imagine that Todd annoyed the shit out of him with stupid 
questions the whole way there and he’d rather run naked 
through a bear cage covered in honey than spend another minute 
with him. Eversman agrees somewhat reluctantly. Oh, poor Todd. 
Nobody wants him.

I’ll just wait until all the teenage girls are finished 
squealing “I DO!”

Okay. Eversman – oh, fuck it, his name’s Matt, okay? – asks if 
Todd has his weapon with him. At this point, I put the VCR on 
pause while I debated with myself for about ten minutes on 
whether or not I should make a slashy double-entendre about 
Todd showing Matt his “weapon” before I decided it’s just too 
easy. Todd says yeah, does Matt want him to shoot anything? 
Yeah, sure. I could believe he’s American. I could also 
believe that Madonna is British but neither or those things is 
going to happen anytime soon. Also, does anyone else think 
that if Matt had said yes, Todd would have completely missed 
the target and gotten knocked flat on his ass by the recoil? 
Just me? Okay.

Speaking of accents that make me giggle, Eric is shouting 
something from the back of the chopper again, but I have no 
idea what it is since I have yet to understand a word he has 
said so far.

And we cut to the barracks, or wherever they serve the food at 
for a meeting of the bad accents. Todd bitches at Eric for 
cutting in front of him in the line. Eric ignores him and then 
acts like a cocky prick when General America (who is looking 
more like General Patton now) tries to chew him out about not 
having the safety engaged on his gun. Or something along those 
lines. Then General Patton bitches at the Perfect Storm guy 
for reasons I don’t quite follow. Maybe he just felt a need to 
reassert his manhood.

That night, everybody’s hanging around in groups of two so we 
can be see various “insightful” conversations that provide us 
with exposition and vague background information on some of 
the characters and yet still doesn’t tell us any of their 
names. I’ll just highlight the ones that didn’t bore me to 
tears. A couple of guys are playing chess and chattering away 
in strategy game analogies that I might find interesting had I 
not seen them in about a dozen other movies (Independence Day 
comes to mind). They vary the formula somewhat by making some 
comments about the “queen” that I will not dignify with a 
response except to say that they made me think of Mel Brooks’ 
Louis XVI playing human chess in “History of the World: Part 
I” (“Gang bang!”). Another guy is doing drawings that he 
claims are for a children’s book, although they look more like 
story boards for “Saving Private Ryan”. 

The comedian of the group is doing an impression of General 
Patton when the general himself suddenly materializes behind 
him. His audience stops laughing and shifts uncomfortably 
while he continues to yammer away cluelessly. Gee, what an 
original plot device! I certainly haven’t seen this routine 
done about a thousand times before! The general takes him 
aside and informs him that he will be cleaning toilets with 
his tongue if he’s ever caught doing that again. Heh.

Meanwhile, Matt’s little subgroup is talking about... I have 
no idea, actually. The conversation turns to why they’re out 
in Nowheresville, Africa getting involved in a civil war waged 
by some wackjob warlord in a backward country. “These people; 
they have no jobs...no food...no education, no future,” Matt 
says. “I just figure...we can either help or we can just sit 
back and watch the country destroy itself on CNN.” Aww, isn’t 
that sweet? And so incredibly naïve. The token black guy says 
‘I don’t know about y’all candy ass white boys, but I was 
trained to kill me some bad dudes’ or words to that effect. 
Matt says yeah, well, he was trained to “make a difference.” 
Oh, what-fucking-ever. I get it writers, seriously. Can you 
stop dropping these anvils on my head now? They’re starting to 
give me a headache. Some guy named “John” starts laughing and 
falls over in a grand-mal seizure. Surprisingly, this has 
nothing to do with the load of crap that Matt just 
regurgitated. 

October 3, 5:45am. I guess that answers my question about the 
time/date stamps. More wailing from cactus ass accompanies 
shots of a couple Muslim extras bowing toward Mecca. How many 
Muslims wear backward baseball caps when they’re praying? 
Seriously, I’m curious.

General Patton tells Matt that “John” is epileptic and is 
therefore being shipped back home ASAP. Sure. My grandfather 
wasn’t allowed to fight in the front lines just because he 
wore glasses, but a guy who could potentially have a seizure 
in the middle of battle gets right in. It’s nice to know that 
the military has such a great screening process. Matt will be 
taking over his job. Whatever that is. I can’t understand most 
of what he’s saying and I don’t care enough to even try. 

Patton then dons the crown of Exposition and spends the 
entirety of the next scene describing the mission to the 
second-in-commands (which includes Eric and Matt). He does 
this in great detail and with the help of visual aids for the 
slower members of the audience. Blah blah assassinate Aidid’s 
top political advisor and interior minister blah blah military 
jargon. He makes sure to throw in a lot of numbers and times 
but it doesn’t really matter because we know it’ll all go to 
shit the second they hit the ground and they’ll have to scrap 
the plan, change the objectives and make it up as they go and 
it’ll take five times as long as it was originally supposed 
to. General Patton says the estimated time to complete the 
mission is thirty minutes. I say he’s kidding himself. Then he 
reminds them that they’re entering hostile territory (really? 
I thought maybe they were going to invade Wisteria Lane and 
take out Carlos. Can they do that anyway? Because that man is 
EVIL) and they should remember the rules of engagement, 
especially the rule that says “don’t fire unless fired upon.” 
Somebody should tattoo that to President Junior’s forehead. 
Along with a footnote that says “and make sure the people 
you’re firing at are actually the ones who fired on you in the 
first place.” 

Now we get a half-assed introduction to Tom Sizemore’s 
character but since the guy who says his name apparently 
doesn’t know the meaning of the word “enunciation” I have no 
idea what it is so I’ll just call him Tom. I’d love to tell 
you what Tom is saying here but, frankly, I have no idea what 
it is. And it’s not for lack of diction (a problem seemingly 
shared by many of these people), it’s just that the majority 
of it is in military jargon that flies right over my head. 
Anyway, some other guy responds to whatever he said by saying 
“life’s imperfect.” Tom says yeah, for you guys. You just 
circle the chaos in your little helicopter, but “down on the 
street, it’s unforgiving.” 

We watch the worshipper with the backwards cap stick a giant 
duct tape cross to the roof of his car. Somehow I don’t think 
he’s just repairing a really bad crack. 

The “good guys” are screwing around playing basketball...oh, 
sorry...”getting ready for the mission” while House of Pain’s 
“Jump Around” blares across the soundtrack. Ah, the 90s. Good 
times. Well, the first half wasn’t so good for me, but that’s 
a long story. Anyway, Matt has a brief conversation with some 
guy named Smith, the sole purpose of which seems to be to 
establish the character’s name and the fact that he and Matt 
are buddies or something.

Ewan McGreggor bitches to some guy named Sizemore (no, not Tom 
and yes, this will probably confuse the hell out of me) about 
being trained to fight and Be All He Can Be and shit only to 
spend the entirety of Desert Storm making coffee for the rest 
of the troops. He’s still pissed about it but at least he 
learned how to make a damn good cup of coffee. He’s also 
alive, which makes me want to slap him for complaining. Or I 
would if I weren’t too busy laughing because I can’t look at 
Ewan McGreggor anymore without picturing him in “geek” 
glasses, speaking in a nasally southern twang and calling 
himself “Zip Martin”. Sizemore tells him he’s gonna get his 
chance at combat now because Sizemore injured himself so badly 
in a ping pong tournament that his arm is in a cast and he 
needs a field replacement. Ping pong? This doesn’t really give 
me much confidence in the people protecting this country. 

Matt gives a little speech to the rest of the boys that I will 
totally ignore. Mostly because I blanked out through this 
entire scene the first time and therefore know that it isn’t 
essential to my understanding of the plot. Actually, I pretty 
much blanked out through the entire first hour of the movie 
and then spent much of the rest of it trying to figure out 
what was going on. And as soon as I figured it out I realized 
I really didn’t care and blanked out again.

Montage of the boys packing things up. Some guy tells Ewan 
(whose name is Grimes, by the way) that he doesn’t need to 
pack a water bottle because they won’t be gone long enough for 
him to need it. Famous last words. Matt tells Grimes that the 
most important thing to remember is to shoot in the same 
direction as everybody else. Hee. Some random guy snickers 
because some other random guy is sticking a piece of tape with 
his blood type written on it to his boot, which he thinks is 
“bad luck”. No, that’s called being “smart”, dumbass.

Matt wanders over next to Todd and asks how he’s doing. Todd’s 
lips say “excited” but the rest of him says “hold me, mommy!” 
He blithers something about training his whole life for this 
moment. He says the word “life” in such a strong British lilt 
that I’m almost surprised when Matt doesn’t ask “are you sure 
you’re American?” Instead, he asks if Todd has ever shot 
anybody. Todd admits he hasn’t. “Me neither,” Matt says. 
Again, I ask how he’s qualified to be giving other people 
orders if he has, like, zero combat experience.

2:29am. Not 2:30. 2:29. Gee, why stop there? Why not go all 
the way down to the millisecond? How about giving the weather 
report too? A helicopter follows the duct-taped car through 
the streets. Back in the Join Operations Center...sorry...I’m 
having “Alias” flashbacks apparently...the commanders discuss 
whether backward-baseball-cap-guy (or BBCG) is reliable, 
seeing as this is his first time working for the U.S. Army.

A soldier I don’t recognize calls home to check up on his 
wife/girlfriend/lover. Twangy “Cold Mountain” music plays and 
we bid him goodbye as this scene has effectively signed his 
death certificate.

Matt tells Eric that he thinks this place would actually make 
a lovely tourist destination. Y’know, if it weren’t for the 
whole war zone thing. Eric acts sullen. “You don’t think we 
should be here,” Matt concludes. “You know what I think,” Eric 
asks. “I should just talk normally and say I was born in 
America but spent most of my schooling in Australia like Mel 
Gibson because this weird southern drawl makes me sound like a 
stupid hick.” Except somehow it ends up sounding like: “don’t 
matter what I think. Once that first bullet goes past your 
head, politics and all that sheeit just goes right out the 
window.” Amen brother. He thinks Matt should just focus on 
getting all the men back alive.

BBCG stops the car suddenly and tells the big wigs that the 
building they want is a couple blocks up but he’s afraid if he 
goes any closer the militia will shoot him. General Patton 
threatens to shoot BBCG himself if he doesn’t do what they 
told him to do, damnit. Nice. He tries to help and all they 
can do is bitch at him for not following exact protocol. It’s 
really a wonder that anyone would volunteer to help Americans 
at all.

Now Tom’s giving a mission to a (presumably different) group 
of guys. I’m not sure if it’s the same mission or a different 
one and all I’m hearing is “blah blah BLAH blah blee blee bla-
blah” so screw it. 

BBCG parks in front of the building, gets out and pops the 
hood. Smoke pours out all over the place. Apparently this is 
the signal for the Hardy Boys to move in because one guy up in 
the helicopter announces “all units: Irene.” I know they 
explained the significance of this code word somewhere, but I 
forgot to mention it and I’ll be damned if I’m going to 
backtrack through the last half-hour to figure it out.

Patton marches over to Matt’s idling helicopter and wishes the 
boys luck. Matt looks nervous. Grimes asks what’s wrong. Matt 
says oh, nothing, it’s just...”he’s never done that before.” 
Grimes understandably panics. I’d like to think Patton is just 
messing with them as opposed to expressing some sort of cheesy 
sense of foreboding. And we get a long sequence of the 
helicopters taking off in formation that’s really pretty 
gratuitous but looks cool anyway.

What follows is quite possibly the longest setup to a battle 
sequence that I have ever seen. Flying. Flying. Kids with 
giant SAT phones alerting the “bad guys” of incoming. Flying. 
Flying. There’s a really cool shot of the choppers flying in 
slow motion over the beach. It’s gorgeous. The music playing 
during this scene is pretty cool too. Back and forth between 
the “bad guys” preparing for battle and the “good guys” 
getting closer and closer to them, moving at roughly the speed 
of the continental drifts. In a somewhat comical moment (at 
least it’s comical to me), we see one of the “good guys” in 
the choppers reading a beaten up copy of “The Client”. It 
would have been funnier though if it had been a copy of “War 
and Peace” and he was, like, two-thirds of the way through it 
because he’s certainly had enough time to do that much reading 
in the month or so it’s taking for them to set up this blasted 
battle.

3:42:68pm. It’s partly cloudy with a 100% chance of flying 
dust and body parts by late afternoon here in Fucking 
Hellhole, Somalia, East Africa. Choppers land in the streets 
and on the roofs and guys pile out. The shooting starts 
immediately. A couple choppers, one of them Matt’s, hover over 
the street and throw down ropes for the guys to slide down. 
Shooting. Running. Chaos. All captured on a steady cam. Then 
we get a really cool overhead shot of a helicopter swirling 
dust with it’s rotors. Yeah, I’m all about the visuals in this 
movie apparently. Speaking of which, where is Orlando? 

Some guy in a tank tells Tom the “bad guys” are shooting at 
them. Tom says, in a voice one would reserve for use with the 
terminally stupid, “well shoot back!” 

Up in the chopper, Matt orders Todd to jump. Hang on a second. 
Was he in that helicopter when it took off? Because I’d swear 
I didn’t see him there before. Although I didn’t know it was 
him until Matt said his name because the helmet pretty much 
obscures his face so I guess it’s entirely possible. Anyway, 
all other action halts while Todd slooooooooooowly gets up and 
grabs the rope. So of course, the second he touches it a 
missile flies by and the chopper swerves to avoid it. Todd 
loses his grip and falls in slow motion – while Matt shrieks 
in horror, naturally – and disappears into the swirling dust 
hovering over the ground. Matt slides down the rope and hovers 
over Todd, wringing his hands uselessly. He calls over some 
random guy who asks where Todd was hit. Matt says he wasn’t, 
he just fell. Random guy gives Matt a look that suggests this 
may be the stupidest thing he’s ever heard.

Meanwhile, a couple other guys exchange semi-amusing reparté 
about whether or not the enemy is shooting at them per se, 
thereby making it okay for them to shoot back. And that’s 
about as much effort as I’m willing to put into recapping this 
scene.

Back with Matt, who is trying to get somebody to send a 
medivac while he removes Todd’s helmet. Yeah, because the 
first thing you should do for a person with potential spine 
injuries is MOVE THEIR NECK. He shouts frantically into his 
walkie as shots are fired all around them. Debris actually 
flies at the camera. Some guy tells Matt (over the walkie) to 
calm the fuck down. “MAN DOWN,” Matt shrieks back. Honey? 
You’re not helping anyone by screaming your head off. Take the 
man’s advise and simmer down a bit.

Back at headquarters, Patton hears the words “man down” and 
wrings his hands uncomfortably. Wait a minute. All that 
shooting and chaos and the only casualty so far is the one guy 
who FELL out of a helicopter and didn’t even get a chance to 
fire off a round? What?

So a couple guys pull a stretcher out of their asses or 
something (I seriously don’t know where it came from) and 
bring it over to Matt and where the hell did that neck brace 
come from? Did I miss the part where another chopper flew by 
and threw medical supplies at them? What? Whatever. They put 
Todd on the stretcher and one guy provides cover fire while 
the others carry him down the street, right through all the 
chaos and gunfire. I wish I could say Orlando moved, 
disrupting the illusion that he is unconscious and seriously 
injured because I love pointing out mistakes like that but the 
stretcher is bouncing around so much that it’s just a miracle 
he doesn’t go flying right off the thing. And yes, the thought 
of that happening sends me into a fit of giggles. And no, I am 
not drunk right now although I’m starting to wish I were.

Elsewhere, Eric announces that the prisoners are ready for 
extraction. Huh? Who? What? Yeah, I think I missed something 
somewhere plot-wise. Ask me if I care. General Patton breathes 
a sigh of relief. Mission accomplished. Except that there’s 
still another hour and a half of the movie to go. Help me.

The guys carrying Todd finally reach the jeeps. Tom frowns at 
them and asks the guy unhooking Todd’s gear what happened. The 
guy says Todd “missed the rope.” Tom asks “how’d he do that?” 
Does the word “accident” mean anything to you, Tom? How about 
“klutz”? The guy just shrugs and makes a face that says “he’s 
18 and stupid. What did you expect?” 

Grimes is knocked flat on his ass by an explosion. He’s not 
injured but everything goes into slow motion while dust and 
debris scatter everywhere, mostly at the camera. I think I’m 
beginning to see a pattern here. Chaos. Shooting. If you’ve 
seen any war movie made after 1998 you know the drill. Now 
Tom’s calling for a medivac for Todd. He gets one sent right 
away. Ah, seniority. Then he barks an order at Eric, who 
slides almost entirely into his aussie accent as he garbles an 
unintelligible response.

Mournful patriotic music complete with snare drums (naturally) 
whangs across the soundtrack as the jeeps drive off. Chaos. 
Shooting. Debris flying at the camera. Shouting of 
incomprehensible orders. Yadda yadda. Then a missile hits one 
of the “bad guys” and he EXPLODES RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE 
CAMERA. Okay, that was completely gratuitous and unnecessary. 
And it looked almost comical! I mean, come on! If you’re going 
to kill somebody, don’t make a joke out of it because it’s 
really not funny. Hang on a second while I wipe foam from my 
mouth here...

The guy shooting from one of the tanks is hit and falls – 
shocker – IN SLOW MOTION into the jeep. At this point, I was 
so confused that I thought this guy was in the transport 
vehicle and I wondered if he had fallen on top of Todd. I’m 
not even going to pretend that I know what’s going on anymore. 
All action pauses while the characters stare at the camera 
angstily so the audience fully understands that an AMERICAN 
has DIED. You know, because America is the center of the 
universe and all. Gack. If Ridley Scott is as religious as he 
is patriotic I may need to buy myself a straight jacket and a 
ball gag before I even *think* of watching “Kingdom of 
Heaven”. Anyway, Eric pops out of the manhole and starts 
shooting like crazy. Sparks, dust and, yes, debris fly at the 
camera. Yawn.

The HAG re-enters the picture. If you don’t remember who he 
is...well, tough because I’m not going over it again. A 
missile shot by him or one of his lackeys hits the tail of one 
of the choppers, which spins crazily and spews black smoke. 
Various soldiers relay the message “6-1 is going down” 
approximately 100 times. Grimes, Matt, et al watch, wide eyed, 
as the chopper spins out of sight. It finally reaches a 
clearing, nicks the corner of a building and crashes to the 
ground spectacularly. It rolls onto its side, propeller pieces 
flying off (at the camera, of course) and slams to a stop in 
the sand. Okay, that was cool. In a morbid sort of way. We cut 
to a lingering overhead shot of the wreckage as the locals 
flee the area. Then we go back to headquarters as a voice says 
“we’ve got a Blackhawk down!”

And that’s my cue! I will now rush through a recap of the next 
hour or so until such time as I feel like slowing down. If you 
don’t like it...well, bite me.

The jeeps return to base to dump off Todd and the dead guy 
while weepy “Cold Mountain” music plays. Eric acts tortured 
and pensive. The “good guys” reach the wreckage and pull out a 
very wounded guy. Some guy gets his hand blown off and another 
guy finds it and puts it in his pocket. I re-evaluate my 
decision to watch this movie while eating. Another guy gets 
blown out of a jeep and loses the entire lower half of his 
body. He makes Tom (whose name I just found out is "McKnight" 
according to his helmet) promise to tell his "girls" he'll be 
okay before he dies. Oy the clichés. One guy goes temporarily 
deaf from all the gunfire. This is referenced many times 
throughout the rest of the movie for reasons that are beyond 
me. I mean, it's treated like it's meant to be a plot device 
used to generate comic relief, but it's not funny. 

Another chopper is hit and we get almost an exact replay of 
the first crash. Note to Ridley Scott: big, special effects 
laden crashes are cool the first time around. The second 
time, they're just gratuitous. So the "good guys" pretty much 
spend the rest of the movie trying to reach the crash sites 
and recover the dead and wounded. This is about the point when 
I realized I no longer cared what happened to these characters 
or the plot because...well, I'll get to that later.

The locals reach one of the crash sites and start looting and 
generally falling prey to crazed mob mentality. A nearby 
wounded soldier who managed to pull himself from the wreckage 
pulls out a picture of his wife and kid and stares at it 
sadly. Amazingly, he is not killed, but that's only because 
the HAG shows up and announces that - for whatever reason - 
Aidid wants the guy taken alive.

One of Matt's guys is wounded and Matt is told the medivac 
will not be able to reach them. Where's Tom when you need him? 
Eric reveals that he speaks the native's language. Blah blah 
blah.

And now we have come to my other favorite scene in this movie. 
A guy I assume is the general of the "bad guy" army reads 
their captive's name - Michael Durant - off his dog tag. "You 
are the ranger who kills my people," he asks accusingly. Mike 
says no, he's a pilot. He just transports the rangers who kill 
his people. General Bad Guy offers him a cigarette and he 
refuses. "That's right, none of you Americans smoke anymore," 
he gripes. Obviously he's never taken a walk around my college 
campus. I'm constantly side-stepping used cigarette butts - 
many of them still smoking away. I've actually had ashes 
flicked at me. Mike asks what they want with him. GBG says oh, 
they just needed some hostages since the Americans have some 
of their men and they don't want the Americans to think they 
have the upper hand - or the bigger dick - or anything. Mike 
says the government will never negotiate for him. GBG says 
that's okay. They can just have a little chat then "soldier to 
soldier". Then he blathers something about killing and 
negotiating that ends with the statement "in Somalia, killing 
is negotiation. Do you really think if you get General Aidid 
we will simply put down our weapons and adopt American 
democracy? That the killing will stop? We know this: without 
victory there can be no peace. There will always be killing, 
you see? This is how things are in our world." Then he walks 
off and I stand up and applaud my television.

Some guy shouts into a bullhorn from a circling helicopter. 
"Michael Durant! We will not leave you behind!" Yeah, you say 
that now. 

Apparently one of the guys in Matt's group has some sort of 
medical training because he tries to stop the wounded guy's 
bleeding by "clamping" the femoral artery. If the femoral 
artery was damaged, wouldn't he have bled out by now? Yeah, I 
think I need to go find myself some beer and try to forget 
that I know anything about human anatomy. Oh, and they can't 
give the guy any morphine while they're digging around in his 
thigh. Joy. Screaming, squicky sound effects and spurting 
blood ensue.

Meanwhile, Grimes makes coffee. HAG and his goons attack in 
the dead of night. Fighting, shooting, chaos, blah blah blah. 
Some "good guys" sneak up on a group of "bad guys" manning a 
missile launcher and take over their post, firing a missile at 
HAG and apparently killing him. I say apparently because it 
looks like Ridley Scott has used up his quota of gruesome, 
gory deaths and maimings for this movie and was therefore 
forced to cut away before the missile actually hit anything 
this time. 

It is not until now, with less than thirty minutes left to go, 
that I finally learned Eric's character's name. It's Hoot - a 
name that sounds hilarious coming from an Aussie attempting a 
Southern American drawl. Blah blah air strikes boom crash. 

Matt assures Soon-To-Be-Dead-Wounded-Guy (who is that Smith 
guy we were introduced to half-assedly earlier) that he saved 
some guy named "Wombly" and did what he was trained to do and 
blah blah blah. None of which changes the fact that he is 
DYING what looks like a very LONG and PAINFUL DEATH. Then we 
have to listen to the standard "tell them I went down 
fighting" cock and bull waterworks fest that makes me glad I 
am a woman and therefore immune to the testosterone-driven 
stupidity that forces men to kill each other in the name of 
their country and then endlessly glorify their senseless 
deaths. Note to self: take Valium before watching another 
Ridley Scott war film. I think I really need that beer 
now...Mr. Smith (I don't think anybody said his first name so 
I'll just call him "John") dies, although this does not seem 
to impede his ability to open and close his eyes whenever the 
camera changes angles.

Eric (I'm not changing names this late in the game) wanders by 
sometime later and berates Matt for acting all mopey. "You 
can't control who gets hit and who doesn't," he says. "Yeah, 
well, Smith's still dead," Matt moans. "Blackburn wouldn't 
have fallen...none of this would have happened." Who's 
Blackburn? [Scrolls back several pages] Oh, yeah, Orlando 
Bloom was in this movie briefly, wasn't he? Oh, well, 
obviously Matt wasn't paying attention to a word Eric just 
said, but I do agree that if people didn't start stupid, ill-
waged wars there'd be a lot less animosity and senseless 
deaths in the world. Eric says he can think about all of that 
later, but right now he needs to focus on getting his men out.

Back outside there is carnage, shooting and general chaos. 
Dust and debris probably fly at the camera, but since it's 
night we can't actually see it. It takes the boys about a half 
an hour to get their shit together and prepare for extraction, 
at which point the time stamp tells us it is two in the 
morning. Then they waste several more hours trying to pull a 
dead body out of one of the crashed choppers. I personally 
think it would make more sense to just set fire to the 
wreckage and burn the dead bodies than make people risk their 
lives to bring them back home just so the families can dress 
them up, put them in a wooden box and stick them in the 
ground, but that's just me. 

5:45:21am. It's 86 degrees with a strong chance of flying dust 
and rampant patriotism in the next twenty minutes. Shooting, 
explosions, chaos. A woman runs right through the danger zone, 
screaming her head off and Matt yells at her to "get down". 
Note to Matt: not everybody in the world speaks English, 
despite what the Americans would like to think. Oy. Hysterical 
female war movie cliché: check, increasingly annoyed recapper: 
check. She picks up a gun and somebody shoots her.

About half a dozen guys - including Matt and Eric - run down a 
dirt road in slow motion, leaving the war torn wreckage 
behind. A bunch of Somali children join then, giggling, and 
lead them to a crowd of sheering Somalis standing outside what 
looks like a roman arena. Yeah, yeah, we get it. They're 
heroes, they risked their lives for their country, rah rah 
America. If anyone starts waving a flag around I may have to 
be carried out of here in a straight jacket and a Hannibal 
Lector mask. 

Apparently this is where they've been taking the dead and 
wounded during the battle. We commence with the tear-jerking 
tribute to the glory of soldiers fighting fruitless battles 
that tends to induce projectile vomiting in the Hollman 
household. Some colonel or somebody announces that they're 
going back out there as soon as they regroup. Eric gives a 
speech that, in the interest of maintaining what little sanity 
I have left, I completely blank out through.

We see some more Somali kids playing in the wreckage of one of 
the choppers (because a twisted pile of jagged metal makes the 
best playground!) while Matt starts an angsty, gravely voice 
over. “I was talking to Blackburn the other day...skinny kid, 
dark hair, really weird accent...” Okay, maybe not. “He asked 
me what changed – why we’re going home. I said ‘nothing’. 
That’s not true...I think everything’s changed...” We cut to 
him sitting in a room with blue tinge. “A friend of mine asked 
me before I got here...’why are you goin’ to fight somebody 
else’s war? What, do you all think you’re heroes?’” That is a 
damn good question. Would you like to answer that, Mr. 
President? Mr. President? Hello? Is that the phone ringing? 
Hello? Yes, this is Ms. Hollman. Oh, the President is too 
busy playing with his Spiderman and Catwoman action figures to 
talk to a “godless, America-hating, sex-crazed, blue-haired” 
liberal like me? Okay then. 

“...if he asked me again, I’d say no...that nobody asks to be 
a hero. It just sometimes turns out that way.” And we finally 
see the person Matt’s talking to: the deceased Smith. Sure. We 
pass up on a conversation between the King of Angst and the 
guy who fell out of a helicopter and broke his back in favor 
of having him talk to a corpse. Wait...that actually makes 
perfect sense... He promises to talk to Smith’s parents when 
he gets home. Josh Hartnet does the standard lip-pursing-chin-
quivering-but-can’t-quite-squeeze-out-a-tear tough guy act 
then walks out of what looks like an airplane hanger while a 
mournful singer wails. The last couple of shots are of an 
airplane hanger door closing...I think...and a cargo door... 
maybe. I have no idea, but the shots look really cool. 

The names of all the Americans who died in this particular war 
scroll across the screen while a voice reads a letter from a 
soldier. I notice that the number of American casualties is a 
very small fraction of the number of total casualties and 
wonder if this is another indicator of Ridley Scott’s Plot 
Before History rule in effect. We get more standard “based on 
a true story” facts that, unfortunately, are written in what 
looks like a two-point font, making them almost totally 
unreadable. There’s something about Mike being released after 
eleven days, President Clinton withdrawing the troops and 
General Aidid being killed. Whatever, I’m done. Oh, and just 
to clarify? I don’t hate America. I just hate blind 
patriotism.

My biggest problem with this movie is the same problem I have 
with almost every Ridley Scott movie I’ve ever seen: the 
characters. One of the major rules of storytelling is that you 
must make your audience sympathetic toward the protagonist so 
they will actually care what happens to him or her throughout 
the story. With the exception of maybe two (“Thelma and 
Louise” being one), every Ridley Scott movie I’ve seen has 
featured protagonists who are so flat or downright unlikeable 
(and here I’m thinking of “Blade Runner”) that I have a hard 
time giving a rat’s ass what happens to them. They could die 
in a horribly tragic and violent blood bath and my only 
reaction would be “huh”. And I’m not alone either, judging by 
some of the reviews I’ve seen for “Matchstick Men”. But there 
are some exceptions and I like the TV show “Numbers”, so there 
is hope that I won’t spend the entirety of my inevitable 
future recap of “Kingdom of Heaven” banging my head on a wall 
and muttering unintelligibly. Although I wouldn’t bet on it.


~Diandra Hollman