01:17Black Hawk Down is Quentin Tarantino’s top film of the century.

04:44The film’s international context: what happened in Somalia’s civil war?

08:35U.S. rules of engagement: return fire only after being fired upon.

10:09Differences between U.S. and UN forces.

13:39What is the American mission in the film?

15:44Aftermath: the impact of Clinton’s withdrawal.

17:13How U.S. action in Somalia differed from the war in Iraq.

18:43The Cold War background.

21:02What does the source book contain that the film omits?

23:41Controversy: civilian casualties.

26:54Controversy: the film’s politics.

29:13The ending.

31:30The U.S. military ethic of leaving no comrade behind is not ancient.

 

Lao Ma: Black Hawk Down demands a particular kind of viewer.

Ah Wu: Somalia was sacrificed to Cold War politics, treated as a pawn and devastated by both the Soviet Union and the United States.

Lao Ma: The U.S. forces possess limited moral legitimacy, but execute chaotically through arrogance, contempt for the enemy, and intelligence failures, until everything collapses.

Ah Wu: One shocking detail shows a soldier finding a severed hand still wearing a watch, placing it in his bag. Leaving no comrade behind means leaving behind no part of a comrade’s body.

 

Black Hawk Down, the source book by Mark Bowden. Born in 1951, Bowden is an acclaimed American author, a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, and a contributor to The New Yorker and Esquire. His books include Black Hawk Down and D-Day. Based on more than a year investigating the Battle of Mogadishu, official files, all available footage, and interviews with over fifty American soldiers and Somalis, it is a work of documentary military literature. Bowden received the National Book Award for lifetime achievement in 2010.