Welcome to hell

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This article was published 11/01/2002 (8872 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

LOS ANGELES — Nine years ago, 18 American soldiers — and 500 Somalis — died in combat over the course of a single day in Mogadishu. It was, and still remains, the U.S. military’s biggest single firefight since Vietnam.

Though most might vaguely recall the photographs of an American soldier’s body being dragged through the streets by a triumphant Somali mob, the events of Oct. 3, 1993 went largely unnoticed. So Mark Bowden, a reporter with the Philadelphia Inquirer, decided to write a book about it.

“I find there are depths of storytelling we very rarely reach in standard journalism,” Bowden says. “Our daily stuff is a mile wide and an inch deep. We don’t hear of some of the fascinating, horrible, triumphant things that are happening.”

Shortly before the book was published, Hollywood ber-producer Jerry Bruckheimer got his hands on a copy; he was riveted.

“That was in 1997,” remembers Bruckheimer, the man behind Armageddon and Pearl Harbor, among many others. “I loved it. I thought it would make a really dramatic and powerful movie.”

Bruckheimer snatched up the rights to the book and eventually enlisted Ridley Scott, who was putting the final touches on Hannibal and basking in the success of Gladiator, to direct.

The final product, which stars Josh Hartnett, the reluctant new object of every teenage girl’s desire, alongside a batch of other boys with brush cuts — Tom Sizemore, Eric Bana and Ewan McGregor, carries the same title as Bowden’s book: Black Hawk Down. The film arrives in theatres next Friday after an Oscar-qualifying release in Los Angeles and New York, where it has stirred up quite a buzz.

The film is exactly what one shouldn’t expect from Jerry Bruckheimer.

Yes, there’s lots of action, but no, it’s not shmooped up with a love story ( la Pearl Harbor) or cheesed up with clich lines ( la Con Air).

“Jerry has a reputation for making extremely successful, pop culture movies, but he told me in our first meeting that he really envisioned this as a departure for him,” recalls Bowden.

“He said he wanted to make it as accurate as possible and in all honesty, I took it with a grain of salt,” he continues. “I thought, ‘Well, they’re wooing the writer, but eventually they’ll do whatever the hell they want.’ But they didn’t. A lot of people would say it’s just because Ridley got involved, but I can tell you that Jerry had this concept even before Ridley got involved.”

“Jerry’s stature as a producer in this industry is one of significance,” agrees Scott. “In the mainstream industry, he’s probably the most successful. But I do films that aren’t necessarily always that. So I think that was a curiosity for him.”

Though the story has been simplified somewhat from the details in Bowden’s book — to make it “more accessible,” Scott says — both producer and director were committed to making the film as realistic and as true to the actual events of Oct. 3 as possible.

In short, it tells the story of a group of U.S. soldiers sent to Somalia as part of a UN peacekeeping operation to extinguish civil war and famine. Their specific mission was to abduct the top two lieutenants of Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. But after two of their Black Hawk helicopters are shot down over the city, the men are forced instead to concentrate on rescuing their fellow soldiers.

“The movie is about heroism and bravery and the anatomy of the battle,” says Hartnett, who plays Staff Sgt. Matt Eversman. “It’s not about the personalities. Ridley wanted to make a movie about the foreground. Not the background, but what’s up front.”

The idea, says Scott, is to take the audience into the war zone.

“The effect we want to impose on an audience is the feeling that you’re there,” he says. “That’s my job. The closer I’m taking you into battle, the more visceral your experience is going to be, as opposed to 20 or 30 years ago, when you didn’t go in there so much, you stepped back and shot a film from there.”

Was there any concern about releasing a film about soldiers in battle at a time when Americans are in the midst of a new war?

Quite the opposite. The film was originally scheduled to be released in March. Though Hartnett says he believes the film was pushed up mainly for Academy Award consideration, Scott offers another reason.

“I thought, it’s more relevant to bring this out now when it’s in people’s minds,” says Scott. “Not that it won’t be in (March) but I thought, ‘why not?’ Let’s go for it now when it’s at its strongest.”

According to Bruckheimer, it’s a chance to show audiences what they don’t see on CNN.

“I don’t think you see this carnage on the TV,” he says. “You see a reporter standing with a microphone and explosions going off in the background. The audience has no idea how these special forces guys operate, what they do, how efficient and committed they are. These are brave young men and this is something people should know about.”