Retrospective Film Review

Black Hawk Down (2001) • 20 Years Later

The story of 160 elite US soldiers who dropped into Mogadishu in October 1993 to capture two top lieutenants of a renegade warlord, but found themselves in a desperate battle with a large force of heavily-armed Somalis.

Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down was nearing release in 2001 when the 9/11 terrorist attacks and subsequent US invasion of Afghanistan undermined confidence in the film. Did its tale of US soldiers fighting Muslim militia, although set only eight years earlier, now uncomfortably — even tactlessly — resemble this world crisis? Should the movie be held back?

If it had been, it’s difficult to see when it could have been released without seeming too topical, for scenarios such as Black Hawk Down ‘s became a familiar part of our daily news for many years after. If unintentionally, Scott’s film turned out to be prescient in its anticipation of what would soon happen in Iraq, just as its tale of a disastrous US military engagement in hostile territory clearly looks…