By Danielle Church
News Editor|
“It is only the dead who have seen the end of war.” -Plato
This is the opening line in the 2001 film “Black Hawk Down.” Once you see the movie, it is truly easy to understand why the filmmakers started the film with such a statement.

“Black Hawk Down” is about the Battle of Mogadishu which took place on Oct. 3, 1993 to Oct. 4, 1993. U.S soldiers went to Mogadishu, Somalia to capture the self-proclaimed president of Somalia, Mohamed Farrah Aidid.

The U.S. wanted to capture Aidid because he had killed over 300,000 people in Somalia and the numbers would only continue to rise if they just sat by and watched. America didn’t want to promote genocide, so they decided to do something about the situation.

The movie is entitled “Black Hawk Down” because U.S soldiers would say this when one of their helicopters had been shot down by “skinnies,” or militiamen from Somalia. Orlando Bloom, Josh Hartnett, Eric Bana, Ewan McGregor and Tom Sizemore are just some of the Hollywood actors who starred in the movie. They all do such a great job of portraying their characters making “Black Hawk Down” even more emotional than it is already.

When I saw this movie for the first time in December, I was shocked that I had never learned about the Battle of Mogadishu in school before. Watching some of the events that took place in the movie was absolutely horrifying and made the battle seem a lot more important than I had realized.

For example, when a second helicopter had been shot down, pilot Durant was left for dead. Other U.S soldiers had tried to save him but were killed in action. Durant hid under a stone barrier while his dead friends were being stripped of their clothing and mocked by Aidid’s men.

It was awful to be watching something like that. I had never felt so mad while watching a movie before because I knew I couldn’t do anything to help those men or Durant, who was ready to commit suicide since Aidid’s men would find him shortly.

Despite the extremely sad or emotional parts of the film, it does have some pretty funny jokes in the beginning and is very interesting. There is never a boring scene and there is no way you will only be able to watch a couple of minutes.

My dad had told me to come downstairs and watch “Black Hawk Down” with him. I told him I only could watch a few minutes because I had homework to do, needless to say I didn’t end up getting the homework done until much later.