Black Hawk Down

I decided to write about Black Hawk Down which is a film directed by Ridley Scott in 2001 about a number of United States soldiers being dropped off in Somalia to settle a civil dispute. According to IMDB this battle took place in 1993 where 100 Army Rangers where dropped off into the heart of the city with orders to capture two infamous warlords. While doing so two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down by RPG‘s, forcing these Rangers to complete another difficult task of securing the areas of the crash. One of the pilots was then taken prisoner but no man gets left behind.

This is one of my favorite films of all time and is one of the reasons why I decided to write about it. Not until this blog post did I really notice the music though. I must have seen this movie fifty times but only now am I realizing the music’s full potential in the film. It truly lets the mood be known.

In general the movie doesn’t stick to one type of music. Throughout the film different genres of music are played. It opens with some authentic Somalia instruments letting you know where the story takes place. It then goes into some city background noise or harmonious flutes and violins. On IMDB the soundtrack includes Elvis Presley multiple times, Stone Temple Pilots, House of Pain, Jimi Hendrix, some indigenous artist and a lot of orchestra. I never realized that these famous musicians were part of such a great movie.

Certain scenes require different types of music, especially a war movie. Something different Ridley Scott did was put an orchestra while fire fights were happening and rock songs on their trip into the town. Generally you would think a loud heavy rock song would fit in with gun fire, loud explosions and helicopters but he proved me wrong. It does go quite well with it. He includes both sad and soft violins but also some very upbeat drums to describe various scenes of panic and pain.

For ex. You can really feel the soldiers pain and can put yourself into their shoes