Down on Black Hawk?
The critics are wrong.

By Rich Lowry, NR Editor
January 26-27, 2002

saw Black Hawk Down only with hesitation. It had been getting panned by some great critics. In fact both NRO's John Podhoretz and The New Republic's Stanley Kauffmann hated it.

They agreed: Black Hawk Down is like Seinfeld in the desert — a movie about nothing.

According to Podhoretz, it's a "graphic, powerful, and meaningless exercise in filmmaking." According to Kauffmann, "a trite collection of combat sequences suspended in limbo." The New York Times chimed in: "accomplished but meaningless."

Well, it depends on what you consider meaning.

If you want a disquisition on Somali warlord politics, the theory of humanitarian intervention, or Clinton foreign policy, then Black Hawk Down is 90 minutes of blithering idiocy. But, on those terms, so is most every war movie ever made.

I think Black Hawk Down got poor critical marks because reviewers couldn't see beyond the hyper-realism, nonstop action, and yes, the lack of developed characterization, all of which scream "B-movie shoot-em-up." When really Black Hawk Down is about something extremely important: honor.

There was very little geopolitical context in Black Hawk Down because geopolitics had little to do with the basic story of the battle of Mogadishu.

For a soldier in battle, obviously, political ideology is irrelevant. He is there to kill the enemy, avoid getting killed himself, and do right by his comrades.

"The movie reflects not a public intellectual's view of the world," Stephen Hunter of the Washington Post wrote. "It teaches stuff they don't know, only the smallest and most bitter of lessons: that ammunition is more important than water, that cover is more important than concealment, and that the good die young."

And that honor can elevate the most brutal bloodletting into something with profound meaning.

The battle for Mogadishu became very quickly a battle driven almost entirely by considerations of honor, as more and more American soldiers jeopardized their lives, not for any grand idea, but simply to save their wounded comrades and recover the bodies of the dead.

But to say this isn't a grand idea is probably wrong, since the finest traditions and ideas of the West (see Victor David Hanson's Carnage and Culture) have been poured into this ethic. The notion of leaving no Ranger behind hadn't sprung up from nowhere, it wasn't just a fetish, but an expression of civilization, honed to a high pitch in the bravery and professionalism of these American soldiers.

In this sense, Black Hawk Down is a rabidly pro-American movie. Only an advanced civilization would be capable of producing such men — respectful of the rules, but capable of taking individual initiative, deeply humane (always careful to avoid harming civilians), but fierce and committed to achieving the necessary destruction.

This point is emphasized by the contrast with the Somalis, who waged a typically Third World kind of warfare, chaotic and barbaric — totally lacking in honor in Western terms.

This is what especially irritated the Times reviewer: "In Black Hawk Down, the lack of characterization converts the Somalis into a pack of snarling dark-skinned beasts, gleefully pulling the Americans from their downed aircraft and stripping them."

But the movie didn't "convert" them to such beasts, it's what they were in that battle. The difference couldn't starker between the Somalis desecrating the body of a dead American, and an American helicopter circling the city, constantly calling out the name over a loudspeaker of a captured American, to let him know he would not be left behind.

It wasn't the Rangers fault that their battle ended up lacking geopolitical "meaning." And there's nothing wrong with a movie that brings us their story with undeniable grit and power.

So, call me a softie, but Black Hawk Down is an incredible cinematic poem to the valor and decency of the American soldier. Thank God we live in a country that can produce such men.

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