There seems to be a slough of awesome war movies/mini tv series that are around right now. The Hurt Locker, a movie set in Iraq in 2004 about a bomb-defuser addicted to the thrills of war just won 6 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. The Pacific debuts tomorrow night on HBO and tells the oft-overlooked story of the war against the Japanese during World War II. Matt Damon also has a new war movie that came out last night called Green Zone where he searches for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but instead stumbles upon a mess of lies and manipulation in the upper ranks of the army. Last night I watched Black Hawk Down, which was about an American mission in Somalia that went horribly awry after a Black Hawk helicopter was shot down.
Freshest in my mind right now is Black Hawk Down. It is probably the most epic war movie I have ever seen. On October 3, 1993, elite US Rangers and Delta Forces went on a mission to capture two senior subordinates of Mohammed Farah Aidid, the violent ruler of Somalia. The mission was supposed to take no longer than an hour, but after a Black Hawk helicopter was shot down chaos ensued as virtually an entire city of crazed militia toting combat guns descended on the surviving pilots. The mission went from a standard procedure that had a schedule precise to the minute to just getting as many Americans out of “The Mog” alive.
There are a seemingly endless number of intense war movies out there, so what exactly makes Black Hawk Down so epic? The combination of non-stop violence and the direness of the American soldiers is what sets this movie apart. The movie briefly describes the situation in Somalia, the famine of biblical proportions, the civil war/genocide that has left 300,000 civilians dead and the violent regime that Mohammed Farah Aidid presides over. Then there are a few scenes of the American forces’ base on the outskirts of the city and their preparation for the seemingly routine mission. That probably takes up 45 minutes of the movie, leaving an hour and a half for the terrifying battle that rages throughout Mogadishu.
In one scene of Black Hawk Down two soldiers volunteer to leave the safety of their helicopter to defend the survivors of the second Black Hawk that crashed. After one guy gets shot, it’s just the pilot with a broken leg and one Ranger to hold off literally hundreds of angry Somalians. I can’t imagine anything scarier than being surrounded by the enemy, with no help on the way. The soldiers realize their perilous situation and remain bravely stoic till the bitter end.
I’m psyched for Monday night’s debut of The Pacific. The new mini-series is from Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, who also produced Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan. (With information from the New York Times television review .) The Pacific supposedly took $200 million to make (recreating battle scenes must be expensive) and follows the lives of three soldiers and their fights in Guadalcanal, Peleliu, Okinawa and Iwo Jima. I have no doubt that the battles in The Pacific will be just as epic as in Band of Brothers, but it will not be the same tv show in a different setting. BOB focused just as much on the friendships forged by the war as the battles, but The Pacific won’t have these sort of moments.
The New York Times articles made a good point about why the Pacific theater is so often boiled down to a few images: Pearl Harbor, the picture of American marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima and the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Many Americans were immigrants from European countries and so when the US fought a war against the Nazis most Americans could relate to the places and the people where the war was being fought. But who had ever heard of such tiny islands in the Pacific Ocean like the Solomon Islands, Iwo Jima or Guadalcanal?
I watched The Hurt Locker two weekends ago with a couple of friends. What struck me the most was the stark and unlikely beauty of the war in Iraq, the creative war scenes and interactions of the three main characters off the battlefield.
The scenes of the American military camp and the sniping scene showed the barren beauty of Iraq. Basically, the desert, which normally is such an ugly and deadly landscape, made the landscape cool. The land during the sniping battle between insurgents and William James and Sgt. Sanborn contributed to the tension. It was just a tiny rock outcropping, a jihad hut in the middle of the desert and some goats that separated the Americans from their enemies.
Usually what appeals to me in war movies is the amount of bullets that fly and the massive explosions. I want to be overwhelmed with the awesomeness of the battle and crank up the surround sound system. What was cool though about The Hurt Locker was how much tension was built up when James calmly defused multiple IEDs lurking in the roadside. The sniping scene where James spotted for Sanborn was also sweet. The Hurt Locker proved that you don’t need an enormous budget like a Saving Private Ryan sort of flick to create a great war movie.
The scene where James, Sanborn and Eldridge get wasted after a mission and Sanborn and James go at it is interesting is you’re more interested in how war affects people’s lives. In history class we talked about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and how soldiers returning home are affected. This scene doesn’t show PTSD, but I’m interested in the lives of soldiers off the battlefield, and I thought this scene showed a very plausible scenario. After a successful mission where James defuses a bomb, he, Sanborn and Eldridge get hammered while blasting hard rock music. James and Sanborn settle their differences with free punches to the other’s stomach, and things fly out of control. In a brief moment of rage Sanborn whips out his knife and puts it right up against James’s throat. I could definitely see a soldier getting killed by another fellow soldier like this. I think it’s similar to PTSD in the respect that these men have such stressful and dangerous jobs that they bring that stress back to their barracks. In order to unwind/drown out their harsh experiences they have to abuse alcohol, which could lead to a fatal accident.
I haven’t seen Green Zone, but I’m a big fan of Matt Damon’s movies. Once again Damon will be a kick-ass star in an action movie, but he’s no longer a lethal amnesiac assassin. He’s an officer in the American army in Iraq in roughly the same time period as The Hurt Locker is set in. This movie is supposed to have done a good job in combining realistic war situations while taking a stand on political matters. There are political messages in this movie when Damon finds the complex and mysterious maze that is the upper ranks of the army.
To me, the reason why guys are naturally attracted to war movies/tv shows is because war represents the ultimate badge of masculinity. There is nobody more masculine and heroic than the soldiers portrayed in these movies. We all yearn to exhibit the same type of valor these soldiers have, but at the same time would never endanger our comfortable lives like they do. We want to be the badasses that mow down the enemy with our machine guns and double back to drag a wounded comrade from harm’s way, but at the same time we realize we are so far from being them. These war movies tap into every guy’s wish to be the brave hero.
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