Black Hawk DownBlack Hawk Down is a 2001 American war film co-produced and directed by Ridley Scott and based on the book of the same title by Mark Bowden that depicts the Battle of Mogadishu, a raid integral to the United States' effort to capture Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid.
The movie features Josh Hartnett, Tom Sizemore, Ewan McGregor, Jeremy Piven, Eric Bana, Ewen Bremner, William Fichtner, Tom Hardy, Sam Shepard, Jason Isaacs, Glenn Morshower and Orlando Bloom. The film won Academy Awards for Best Film Editing and Sound in 2001.
Plotn a military raid, a task force of Delta Force Soldiers, Army Rangers and 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment attempt to capture two of Warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid's senior subordinates in the Mogadishu neighbourhood of Bakaara Market. The mission is led by Major General William F. Garrison and is supposed to take no more than half an hour. The extraction by the Delta team is successful, but the Somali Militia, armed with RPGs, shoot down two Black Hawk helicopters, and the resulting rescue extends the mission to over 18 hours.
The film follows many characters through the build-up, assault and rescue. It shows how Staff Sergeant Matt Eversmann is placed in charge of Ranger Chalk Four, before portraying the raid and successful extraction of the wanted persons; and shows the first injury, as PFC Todd Blackburn falls from a helicopter as it maneuvers to avoid an RPG. While extracting Blackburn from the city, Sergeant Dominick Pilla is killed. This is the beginning of the indication that the troops are overwhelmed by the volume of enemy militia, and builds up to the two helicopter crashes: Super Six-One piloted by Cliff "Elvis" Wolcott, and Super Six-Four piloted by Mike Durant. Durant is taken prisoner after the two Delta snipers who requested to be inserted near the crash site of Super Six-Four (Randy Shughart and Gary Gordon) are killed while defending him.
The film also follows two Chalk Four machine gunners who are supposed to return with the extraction team, but miss the Humvees as they leave, and get lost. One of them is deafened by machine-gun fire, but they eventually make their way back to Eversmann. Corporal Jamie Smith attempts to rescue one of them whose flashbang grenade was shot and exploded, but Smith is shot as well, and eventually bleeds to death as the Rangers attempt to give him medical care.
The film approaches its conclusion as the U.S. Forces regain control with strafing runs by Little Bird Helicopters. A convoy of United Nations Pakistani troops, and soldiers from the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division, along with other United Nations forces, including Malaysian Army elements, arrive to extract the wounded. Back at the base, Sergeant First Class Norm "Hoot" Hooten begins to restock on ammunition, preparing to go back out to rescue downed soldiers, and Eversmann tells the now deceased Jamie Smith that he will fulfill his dying wish which was to tell his parents he "fought hard today."
The film ends with text informing the viewer that "1000 Somalis died and 19 Americans lost their lives in the conflict (the 19 soldiers and officers who died are then listed by name and rank). Mike Durant was released after 11 days of captivity. On the 2nd of August 1996, Warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid was killed in Mogadishu. General Garrison retired the following day."
Background and production
Black Hawk Down was originally the idea of director Simon West who suggested to Jerry Bruckheimer that he buy the film rights to the book Black Hawk Down: a Story of Modern War by Mark Bowden and let him (West) direct; but West moved on to direct Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) instead.
Despite Ken Nolan being credited as screenwriter, others contributed to it uncredited; Steven Zaillian re-wrote the majority of the script; Sam Shepard (MGen. Garrison) wrote most of his dialogue; Eric Roth wrote Josh Hartnett and Eric Bana's concluding speeches. Composed mostly of participant accounts, Spec 4 John Stebbins became the fictional "John Grimes", because Stebbins was convicted by court martial, in 1999, for sexually assaulting his daughter.[3] Reporter Bowden said the Pentagon requested the change.[4] He wrote early screenplay drafts, before Bruckheimer gave it to a screenwriter; the PoW-Captor conversation, between pilot Mike Durant and militiaman Firimbi, is from a Bowden script draft.
For military verisimilitude, the Ranger actors took a crash, one-week Ranger familiarization course at Fort Benning, Ga.; the Delta Force actors took a two-week commando course, from the 1st Special Warfare Training Group, at Ft. Bragg, N.C. Ron Eldard and the actors playing 160th SOAR helicopter pilots were lectured by captured aviator Michael Durant at Fort Campbell, Ky. The U.S. Army supplied the matériel and the helicopters from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment; most pilots (e.g. Keith Jones, who speaks some dialogue) participated in the battle on October 3–4, 1993. Moreover, a platoon of Rangers from B-3/75 did the fast-roping scenes and were extras; though none of them had served in the original battle they have since served in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Most of Black Hawk Down was photographed in the cities of Rabat and Salé in Morocco; the Task Force Ranger base sequences were filmed at Kénitra. The film features no Somali actors.
In order to keep the film at a manageable length, 100 key characters in the book were condensed down to 39. A large number of the actors who played American soldiers are actually from different countries. The list includes: Ewan McGregor (Scottish), Eric Bana (Australian), Kim Coates (Canadian), Ioan Gruffudd (Welsh), Ewen Bremner (Scottish), Jason Issacs (English), Zeljko Ivanek (Slovenian), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Danish), Tom Hardy (English), Matthew Marsden (English) and Orlando Bloom (English). When Orlando Bloom auditioned for the role, he informed the casting directors that he knew what it was like to break his back (as he had done so only a couple of years before when climbing out on a drain pipe from a friend's flat). His character in this movie breaks his back after falling from the helicopter.
On the last day of their week long Army Ranger orientation at Fort Benning, the actors who portrayed the Rangers received a letter which had been anonymously slipped under their door. The letter thanked them for all their hard work, and asked them to "tell our story true", signed with the names of the Rangers who died in the Mogadishu firefight.
The film features soldiers wearing helmets with their last names on them. Although this was an inaccuracy, Ridley Scott felt it was necessary to have the helmets to help the audience to distinguish between the characters because they all look the same once the uniforms are on.
The set was constantly bothered by stray dogs running into shot. Ridley Scott kept them in because he liked the authentic feel of their presence. Eight dogs were adopted by various members of the production and were eventually brought back to the US with them.
At Bakara Market, a Moroccan street sign is revealed which depicts 'Tidarine Street' in Arabic and French.
Ewen Bremner partially lost his hearing because of all the gunfire. He did recover however.
The photo of a wife and child that Ron Eldard (playing Mike Durant) looks at once his situation becomes hopeless following the deaths of his protectors is actually a photo of Eric Bana's wife and child. The props department forgot to take a photo of a wife and child with them, so they asked Bana's wife and child who were traveling with him if they could use a photo of them in the movie.
ReceptionBlack Hawk Down had a limited release on December 28, 2001, opening to only four theaters, but it still earned $179,823 in its first weekend, for an average of $44,956. On January 18, 2002 the film had its wide release, opening at 3,101 theaters and earning $28,611,736 in its first wide release weekend to finish first at the box office. As it opened on the Martin Luther King holiday, the film earned an additional $5,014,475 from the extra day of the long weekend. Black Hawk Down would go on to finish first at the box office for the next two weekends. When the film was pulled from theaters on April 14, 2002, it had grossed $108,638,745 domestically and $64,350,906 internationally, for a total worldwide gross of $172,989,651.
Subyek: Black Hawk Down 
Sun Jan 30, 2011 9:57 am
