Hollywood is in gung-ho mood after September 11th and war in Afghanistan. But its latest war offering, Black Hawk Down, is another factual travesty, suggests Ed Power
In the sleek new war movie Black Hawk Down, Scottish heart throb Ewan McGregor plays real-life American John "Stebby" Stebbins, a former soldier today serving a 30-year sentence for raping a 12-year-old girl.
Stebbins was a member of the elite Ranger unit that led a disastrous October 1993 raid in the war-ravaged Somali capital, Mogadishu, an event recounted with dazzling aplomb in the film. Dispatched to seize two henchmen of tribal warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid, US troops blundered into a calamitous street battle that claimed the lives of 18 Americans and at least 500 Somalis.
The debacle continues to cast a pall over US foreign policy. Television footage of bloodied marines dragged naked through the streets of Mogadishu revived the spectre of Vietnam and rang a death knell for the nascent Clinton administration's interventionist leanings.
But these complexities are barely touched upon in the film, a glittery, callow feature that casts its American protagonists as rag tag mama's boys and slurs Somalis as Kalashnikov-toting sub-humans possessed of an insatiable lust for carnage.
Director Ridley Scott, whose CV includes Gladiator and Hannibal, says he set out to relay honestly the horrors of modern war. His claim to authenticity rings hollow, however - the movie breezily blurs the facts, conflating two distinct phases of the Somali operation.
Should we be surprised at the film's failure to address these complexities? After all, Hollywood has cultivated a long tradition of fudging history and portraying foreigners as one-dimensional cannon fodder. And although Scott can paint a memorable image - his Blade Runner remains one of the most haunting movies of the 1980s - he is a hopelessly naïve filmmaker, favouring pat - if visually deft - morality fables over the grey ambiguities of real life.
Scott's crime is to betray his source material. Black Hawk Down is based on a 1999 book of the same name by Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Mark Bowden. Bowden's original Inquirer articles suggested American military chiefs underestimated the Somalis' stomach for a fight and displayed dangerous arrogance by unleashing in broad daylight Rangers and Delta Force units trained for night combat.
Understandably, Somalis are rather irked. They describe the movie as a psychological setback for the country.
What John Stebbins, locked away in Fort Leavenworth military prison, Kansas, makes of all the attention is anybody's guess. It is unlikely he will even recognise himself on screen. To avoid upsetting audiences and affronting the military, Scott changed the character's name, remoulding him into a loveable - and resolutely straight-up - kook.
As ever in war movies, the first casualty is truth.