Midweek Mention... Black Hawk Down

Black Hawk Down

Sidey: This is the start of operation week. Because we had so much operation stuff going on. Well, I think the last two main features were

Operation Yes. Named

So it forced our hand and we're starting off with a military operation.

Reegs: Yeah, well this was an operation that contained an operation within it, but I already know that a listener has trumped me.

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: For a

Sidey: got one more.

Reegs: one more. So, yeah, I thought I was being clever cuz this had a memorable operation. The femur.

Dan: So, so we are talking about an operation within an operation. Within an operation in

Sidey: it's like inception where you go in so many levels down. Yeah.

Reegs: But we'll get to that in the main, main review this week, I guess

Dan: Super.

Reegs: when we do the top five.

Dan: So this is an old classic, this Black Hawk down, or at least I remembered it as an old classic

Reegs: Mm-hmm.

Sidey: Yeah.

I, yeah, I watched it around that time, but not since

Cris: it was actually 2001.

Sidey: Yeah. Space Odyssey. Yeah. Right.

And I had forgotten, not necessarily plot, cause the plot is fairly straightforward.

But, Like the fucking list of people who was in this.

Reegs: cast is incredible.

Sidey: It's easier to list like a-listers who aren't in this film because it's just like ridiculous. I was watching it. Oh my God. Him, oh Jesus. He's in it as well. You know, it's mental.

Cris: although

Reegs: Even Jesus,

is in this. Yeah.

Cris: although I have to say once they put the helmets and all the military gear on,

Sidey: why they wrote their names on them.

Cris: They all kind of look the same.

Sidey: literally, cuz they didn't. In, in, in reality, they don't have their names written on, but purely for the fact of trying to differentiate people. That's why that

was in the film. Yeah, Because

it was challenging,

Dan: I must admit. I, I was looking at at some of the people here and Did you say Tom Hardy

Sidey: Thomas Hardy.

Reegs: He's builders Thomas Hardy in this, because this was before his big break. He's in,

Sidey: is his debut. Yeah.

Reegs: He's with you and Bremner in he spends a lot of the movie with sick. It's not Sick boy, is it? It's yeah.

Sidey: No, not say boy. Spud Spud. Yeah,

Reegs: right.

Dan: Okay. Did, didn't he was MBK then, was he? Yeah. Right. Okay. So I didn't recognize him.

You know, I mean, they've got,

Sidey: well, he's in camouflage, isn't he?

Dan: in camo. That's what it would've been.

Reegs: let's go through it because it, I mean it really is a great cast. You've got you and McGregor you've got Ashton Kercher,

Sidey: I thought that was why you picked It

Reegs: It was, that is also part of Whyte. Yeah.

Dan: Eric Banner.

Reegs: Eric Banner, Tom Sizemore.

There's a character called Sizemore in this as well, which is confusing. Orlando Bloom, yen Grifford.

You've got,

Sidey: Jason

Reegs: Jason Isaacs. Yeah. William Fickner or

Sidey: Orlando Bloom, yeah. Is quite pivotal as well.

Reegs: Yeah. And what's his name from Game of Thrones? Nikolai

Sidey: Oh

Costa Wello.

Reegs: yeah. And others. Others? Jeremy pn.

Sidey: Yeah.

Yeah, he dies.

Reegs: Thank God

Sidey: he is supposed to be a real piece of shit.

Reegs: Yeah.

Real, Yeah.

Cris: real life.

Reegs: really horrible. Yeah,

Cris: Right. Okay.

Sidey: His, I think he is his character from

Reegs: Yeah, that's what I heard. Yeah.

Cris: Okay.

Sidey: Yeah.

 the film starts off with a, with some text and there's a quote from Plato.

Yes. I thought he'd been dead fors, but No, he's like, he makes a

Cris: crazy. He makes it, yeah.

Sidey: literally about

Reegs: this battle. Yeah.

Sidey: They're Need the dead Get over a war or something like that.

Reegs: Yeah.

Cris: See the end of the war.

Sidey: Yeah, yeah,

Dan: Yeah, it's there is quite text heavy. You've, you've read a small book by the time it gets to the opening scene really, cuz it runs all the, all the credits and we learn that somalia's a tough place to be in the at the time

Reegs: in 1993.

Cris: Not much has changed though.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: Still

not top of my holiday holiday

Cris: It's not really where you would want to go on holiday. Although the beaches did look nice.

Dan: They look

Sidey: did look nice. Yeah.

There's a

Reegs: a bit miny.

Sidey: yeah, but there's a, a kind of apocalypse now kind of helicopter thing where they're going across, setting the scene and they see some. Boar or pigs or something. Yeah. And we learned that Eric Bannon's character's real badass cuz he, we don't see it, but we cut to pig on the barbecue basically.

And that's how they're gonna, that's how they're gonna roll.

Dan: Yeah. You know, this guy's badass cuz he's just come off of an operation, I think, and sees these wild boards running.

Sidey: Yeah. Like, nothing's phasing him. He's like, just from one battle to the next. It's just like, we've got a job to do. Let, let's go

Dan: Exactly. And, and you start to learn a little bit about the, the, the team and the, and the different players and things. But there's. The Sizemore and, and a few other generals. There's a, there's a group of kind of generals or field marshals that sat in a, an operation war room.

And there's a problem with one of the Somalian generals that they want to get him. They found intel and there's a taxi driver who's made his way through what is just

Reegs: wait.

Dan: the worst, worst place in the world to be a taxi driver. And he's got a cross on the top of his

Sidey: That's how the, the operation is gonna be played out at Fir first though we get Orlando Bloom being introduced as a fairly green kind of, I dunno what his rank would be.

Reegs: He's like, he's just turned up his

Sidey: and he looks really young as well, cuz this was, you know, over 20 years ago, I guess. And he's gonna be our sort of introduction into everything. So he's bounced around and, and he's introduced to Ashton Kutcher, who's like, right, don't be a fucking prick, you know.

Dan: Yuan McGregor is

Sidey: he's the coffee

Dan: He's the coffee man.

Reegs: Frank Grimes?

Grimsey Yeah.

Sidey: to be called.

Dan: He, he's he's been chained to a desk since he got there.

Sidey: He's never seen any action,

Dan: which, which,

Reegs: it looks to be fine by him.

Dan: Yeah, it did, didn't it? He, it didn't like, Looked like he wanted any action.

Reegs: He was mostly interested in brewing a perfect cup of coffee. Yeah. Which he explains at length to

Dan: And there there's little bits of humor, isn't there? And he goes why are you here? And he goes, I've got skills.

And he goes what? Typing? He goes, can you type? He goes, no, he just carries back on typing. Then he like, that's it. I've got these skills.

Reegs: but

against the backdrop of all this and we're introduced, there are so many introductions.

Is it the hard ass is it Jason Isaac's character and he's getting the mickey taken out of him by one of the other men. And you know, there's all the whooping and yeah,

Sidey: There's a lot of, it's not caricatures, but they're just meeting the gang. And there's like the funny one who's doing a bit of standup in front of the guys. There's the arty one who's doing a a storybook, I think for his kids. And there's, you know, just the general badass ones and the camaraderie stuff is, is really good, but they're, but they're waiting for, you know, the call to, you know, get out

Dan: to Hoo-ha.

Yeah, that's, that's what they want to do.

Reegs: do. And the call is to go and target the self-proclaimed president of Somalia.

This guy Mohamed Farra Id, I,

Did

Dan: You got that perfectly.

Reegs: And you know, there's, there's a United Nations peacekeeping. Operation there. And they're basically to go in, follow this, they've got this informant like that. Dan was saying, he's gonna mark the place and they're gonna go in. It's a really simple operation.

They think, I mean, they're so caval, they're so cavalier about it. They take Kevlar out of their body suits and canteen and they don't bring extra canteen of

Sidey: Yeah.

You get to see who all the people are who are almost certainly gonna die is the people who are saying we'll be back in an hour. Him taking

Reegs: out, taking

Sidey: his body armor taking the, he says it that bit, weighs 12 pounds. So you don't wanna be carrying that around. And you're like, you're dead. You're gonna die.

And so they set the scene and it's, yeah, it's meant to be,

Reegs: sold this quick Inn

Sidey: as they're sat in the, in this tent in a relatively comfortable right in out, this is what we do. We go here and we take him, him, him, him again. And then you see the scene and you're like, well, it fucking ain't gonna be like that.

Reegs: Well,

they're set up in a I think they're set up in a football stadium basically outside of town. Aren't they a

And the, the actual, where they're doing this operation is not that far away from where the American base is.

So they're expecting, like, say, to just go in and out and they get all hoofed up. There's a load of helicopters. How many go.

Dan: Four?

Sidey: No, it's more than, there's about

Cris: No, there's four. There's four. Four. Black Hawk. Black

Sidey: because a guy

Cris: there's another six

Reegs: There's little

Cris: the ones that,

Reegs: because they're carrying snipers and all also, I mean, and it, there's overwhelming like

Sidey: throbbing hard on watching this.

Reegs: Yeah. Superiority from the American force here who are kind of going in, they're tracking this car, like you were saying, they've got an informant who's got, it's as simple as they've got a, a bit of gaffer tape on the top of the car in a cross, and they're following it with these cameras from above. Is it just not, wouldn't have been drones, would it?

It

Cris: the helicopter, it was the small helicopters. You could see them kind of always flying

Dan: high

enough not to, to have be

so suspicious. Yes. But

Sidey: well, there's no getting away for it because there's a youngster who just watches the camp and as soon as anyone leaves the cabin and heads towards that, he's on the phone and he just holds it up and you hear it.

And

Dan: choppers and

Sidey: all The all the bosses back in, in the streets like, yep, chopper's coming, let's go.

Dan: Re really simple there. Comms and everything, wasn't it, they just had a radio, they'd right up to another level or drop it down a level to somebody else who would just hold it up to the sky or say a few words.

And that was all the Somalians needed to. To know they will come and prepare their battle stations, if you like.

Reegs: Yeah. But pretty quickly, the Americans have gone in and kind of got a control of the situa where things kind of start going out of control is when Blackmore falls out of the helicopter.

Dan: Yeah.

Sidey: Or Orlando. They bloom.

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: Well,

they've got they've got skins in the, in which is the, the enemy who have got R P G kind of rocket launching

Sidey: Yeah. It's one particular

Dan: And they're aiming at the helicopter. So the helicopter makes a quick maneuver and he gets out the way of this rocket. He just shifts round. But that same time, Orlando bloom's not.

Ready and he falls out. He's, he's ready to go down the rope, but not, hadn't quite got a hold of it and ends up falling like 40, 50 feet

Reegs: straight onto his

Dan: Onto his back and, and so winded. Um, He's pretty badly winded. Twisted ankle, I would've thought. And, and so, Josh on it.

Sidey: Oh, is that who it was?

Oh,

Dan: That's him. Yeah. Aston Kuia. Yeah. Um, Drops down to create a perimeter around him and and, and get him to safety

Sidey: there's been already been a few shouts from the top brass of saying, you know, everyone gets back. You know, no, we don't leave anyone out there, you know,

Dan: this is a major theme that goes through the film.

It's also worth mentioning they haven't told the. The allied forces, they're working with the Pakistani general who's there supporting them? They're going to do this. They just thought it's a 30 minute in and out job. So

Sidey: bit of the odd in and out.

Dan: They, they're going in where they shouldn't at a time. Nobody knows.

Sidey: knows. Well, it just massively, massively underestimate

it.

Dan: Yeah.

Cris: that's what Tom Semos character says after the first meeting. The one of the colonels asks him like, what do you, what are you saying? He's like, well, This is a daytime operation in the middle of hostile territory.

Yeah. Where everyone's carrying a gun and there's no extraction. We'll have to drive through the extraction. Yeah. Other than that, it's all good.

Reegs: And it,

and it is, you know, it, it does very quickly become urban warfare, but like a computer game

Sidey: that

you see. yeah. Yeah.

Reegs: modeled. But

Dan: there's a lot of shooting in this film, isn't it? It's hard to, it was hard for me to keep up with so much going on.

There's little narrow streets, buildings, dust, and all the rest of it there

Sidey: it's, it's hard to keep up with who's alive and who isn't. Yeah. And when cuz when it, after Orlando Bloom Falls, that's the catalyst for it all

Reegs: Yeah. It starts to fall

Dan: they've lost the

Sidey: got, then they've got men on the ground's confusion, eventually wanted

Reegs: they send some Humvees after them and there's a big battle and,

Sidey: and people get separated. And then I, I had like, I completely lost that Tom Hardy and Spud were, were lost. You know, I, I

Reegs: they essentially get, they're, they're put in a covering position and then they're abandoned effectively

Dan: about.

They were, they were,

Sidey: I'd forgotten about

Reegs: So they're suddenly in the middle of the, the city, kind of just the pair of him, spuds gone deaf from

Sidey: He says, don't point that fucking gun right next to my head and shoot. Yeah. And he immediately points the gun. He might rest the barrel on his nose virtually and just shoots. He's like, I'm fucking hit.

Yeah. Yeah.

And

Dan: well, he does save his life while he is doing

Sidey: He, he genuinely lost his hearing doing that.

Dan: Really? Yeah. Yeah.

Reegs: if you fire a blank next to

Sidey: something. Yeah. And it, it, it was obviously, it was temporary, but he did have like severe hearing damage.

Dan: Well, I don't disbelieve it cuz there was a lot going on

Reegs: It's never, while you are watching it, I mean, it's gonna be difficult to talk about. We'll just probably talk about key events and things, but while you're watching it, I didn't find it unclear. You know, the, the, it's the, the action is staged very well. You always know I felt who was in the shots or what was happening to them or the geography of where pe like, cuz it's quite a confusing thing now.

You've got all teams split across different parts. But in general, the sense of where everybody was in relation to everybody else was reasonably clear.

Dan: it came together in parts, but it was certainly parts where I just didn't know. I wasn't, didn't detract from the enjoyment of it, but I just wasn't sure who this was or

who. who were gonna do.

And it was so loud at one stage you had to turn it down.

Reegs: Yeah, it was loud. It was loud. So eventually, anyway

Sidey: well, a Black Hawk.

Reegs: black hawk goes down.

Sidey: Yeah. I definitely mistitled this film because actually two of them go should be Black Hawks down.

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah. That was, that was the big spoiler, wasn't it?

That there was actually another

Dan: one. Yeah. And then then the race is on for them to not leave a man behind make sure that they've secured the

Sidey: Is this just an American thing or would say like if the Marines went in or whatever, would they have to extract someone who's dead, like, or would you just fucking leave him?

Would you risk,

Dan: more

Sidey: this, I suppose this is a conversation for the end of the movie, but obviously there's a huge fucking casualty list because they

Reegs: not as many as compared to the Somalians.

Sidey: Well, yeah, I did see this. The stats are

Reegs: The stats are pretty overwhelming at the end, really. It's difficult to get your head around them,

to be honest.

Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. And yeah, I don't know about that though side. I mean,

Reegs: I, think

the Brits, I think, I think it is

a rule of the army, isn't

Cris: think it's a rule of the special forces.

Yeah. As far as I can remember. I, I remember watching once

Sidey: you wanna repatriate the,

Cris: this

Sidey: the guys you've

lost,

Cris: It's

also the,

Reegs: they wanna blow up the technology as well.

They don't want him to like

Cris: and, and you don't want anything to be captured because these are the, are the tip of the technology. I, I was just thinking about the Navy seals, the American Seals

Sidey: Our, our,

Cris: think it's, yeah, them, they clap sometimes as well.

They have, one of the mottos is, is

means we're always faithful. And that applies to being faithful to their country, but to their own. So there's no one left behind. That's

Reegs: Definitely gets my seal of approval.

Dan: Ooh.

Sidey: But yes, that, that now becomes the new mission. Cuz I think they have, they have captured someone so they, they, there is a group that goes in and does get the job done.

Reegs: They've got two Laurie loads full of like people that they want to extract, including this warlord guy.

That part of the operation went.

Sidey: Yeah, they,

so they're gone. They're out. But now it becomes, right, you need to create a perimeter round, well, you need to get to the crash site first, which is a fucking job in itself. Then create a perimeter and then wait for some kind of fucking extraction that we're gonna have to basically drive

Reegs: make it up on the fly.

Basically,

Dan: A lot of this then goes into Americans being real heroes, volunteering to go into absolute shit storm environments,

Reegs: It's not about Americans, it's about the military. Cuz I think this is, you know this,

Sidey: not a lot of flag waving in this.

Reegs: it's not that, yeah, it's, it's kind of anti-war. But pro-military, I would say this movie, it's like talks about the sort of, Aspects of heroism and doing incredible things under difficult circumstances and the horrible choices that people are faced with and that sort of thing.

You know, it, it's much more that stuff than

flag waving and

Dan: the, the fear though of some of them going in and that they. They get sort of strapped up anyway. There's a couple of guys like Eric Banner's, one who, who has no fear, who's saying, right, Roblox, just drop me off here, then I'll, I'll just walk, I'll, I'll walk the rest it away.

And then you've got you know, the Tom Semore, his character, who, who's. At one point he's leading the, the convoy out there, and he's meant to go turn around, go back to where he's just

Sidey: almost comedic when he's in the Humvee, in the passenger seat, the

driver's there, the driver gets shot or, or the, or the winds can get shot out and he's got glass on his face and he's like, don't fucking take your foot off the accelerator.

Yeah. He's leading over to driver and he gets shot. Kind of through the neck, but not through the artery bit. And he manages to get them back and they're obviously like, well, you don't need to go fucking back out there. And he's like, no, I got, you know, not leaving. I gotta go back out. You

know,

Dan: I'm going back out there. I, I think, you know, with those, that pride of himself and, and within the Army, I, I, I believe that, you know, there'll be people that will go, I'm not leaving my mates out there. I'm going back. They think that I've left, I'm going back out there.

Sidey: of it is you're, you're fighting for the guy next to you.

It's all about the guy next to you. You've gotta make sure that you're there for them and they're there for you. I think it would completely failed otherwise. And then, so the movie does become pockets of different individual battles

Reegs: Yeah, they do. Eventually a couple of them meet up, cuz Josh Hartner is hole up with a few guys somewhere in a building, isn't he,

with his,

Dan: Spudding and Thomas

Reegs: Thomas Hardy,

Dan: get there eventually. I

Sidey: I think the most, like,

I

guess one of the most like scenes of like absolute braveries is Jamie Lannister and a guy are the only ones who are able to get, or the, certainly the first ones to get to the second crash site. And the pilot or the co-pilot is still alive.

Yeah. And they drag him out and, but it, but it is

three, but he's from,

Dan: from mystery Alaska.

Sidey: Right. He's, but

he's. Certainly can't walk. He's just like sat down with a weapon. If anyone comes in there, shoot him. Right. So he takes out a good fucking

Dan: Really doing well,

Reegs: 15, 20 people. Yeah. It's

Sidey: And then the two of them take out God knows how many, but

Reegs: it's clear it's a suicide

Sidey: of, yeah, it's a, you are just, As soon as you're out of ammo, you are gonna be fucking killed.

And

Reegs: Well, they're surrounded by probably three, 300

gunmen, something like

Dan: was like one of those computer games, but it's just a wall of people

Sidey: toward. and I, I said to KC, I watched this one with the misses. I said, oh, he, there's pilot. He should have probably fucking saved one for himself. But he's actually captured and makes it out.

You find it out in the end. Yeah. I mean, he probably had a pretty fucking terrible time. Possibly. I don't, it doesn't say why

Reegs: well in the middle of it, he has a little chat with the the sort of def facto leader of the resistance now about the futility of war and, and American imperialism a little bit as well.

Dan: Yeah. And sand. Do you think just captain our leader is, is gonna mean we're all gonna put down our

Reegs: Yeah, Yeah. Exactly's not

Dan: gonna happen. There can be no, you know, unless we win, there will be no peace. And it was just such a, you know, a crazy situation till then. Could you see kids, women, anybody

Reegs: It's a terrible scene where a woman's running away from battle and then turns around, picks up

Sidey: woman. He says, don't do it, don't do it. Don't do it,

Reegs: do

it

and he has to shoot

Sidey: There's also another scene with a child, child who shoots, I guess was his father. Yeah.

Or certainly

Dan: he Just as he's about to get shot himself, the American soldier slips on the, on the doorstep or something. And because he is on the floor, the kid shoots right above him into his dad. Yeah. And then drops the gun, runs over to his dad, dad.

And he's thinking, do I,

Sidey: he

was gonna fucking mow him down with a,

but

Dan: he doesn't. And he, he kind of,

Sidey: but there is, there is the operation that we do get to, so one of the, one of the guys, it's almost like full metal jacket, you know, where someone gets injured out in the field and they run out to save him.

Yeah. And they get

Dan: No,

don't go back.

Sidey: And so this guy's hit in the leg. It's, it's pretty bad. There's also another grim one where, A guy gets shot and drops his rifle and I thought, oh, he is got away with that. He's just let his gun shot over his hand and then you see his hand and it's all fucking mangled.

Reegs: have all gone.

Sidey: But this guys gets shot and the leg go when they get him back in this sort of relatively undercover bit.

Reegs: Is he the guy who has the unde, the unexploded RPG

Sidey: no

Reegs: in his thigh?

That's unbelievable. Yeah.

Sidey: This guy, this is where, this is the operation scene. So he's been shot and it's got the artery.

So as soon as they take the pressure off the wound, the blood is just fucking spraying everywhere. Yeah. And there is a,

Reegs: this was the operation I was thinking of. Yeah. Within, yeah. And it was called Operation Serpent something, or rather the operation

Sidey: they've got to they, they explained to him cuz there is a, a medical guy there.

He's like, this is gonna really fucking hurt, but it's gonna save your life. But we've gotta get in and

Dan: clamp your artery

Sidey: we can't give you any more thing cause it'll slow your heart rate down and that'll kill you. So we're just gonna have to do this. We're gonna have to reach fucking into your

Reegs: Ashton Kuts. Gotta hold the wound open.

Sidey: Yeah. Get, find the artery, clamp it, and, and he'll be all right. And so they do it. He's fucking screaming his head off and there's this race, there's a race to, to get, to get the artery and they can't do it. And he is like, oh fuck. It's like retreated back into his fucking hip or something. So, I was, then, I was unsure if the guy had died or not, cuz he's.

Dan: I didn't get this. I, I, I thought

Sidey: he died. He died there and then he's, he's, was that not him in the

Reegs: the, at the tent at the

Dan: Unless there was another guy with no legs. I was thinking, I thought he'd already died, this guy. But,

Sidey: I

think

Reegs: they left his fate to be unknown and then known.

Yeah.

Dan: Yeah, it was,

Sidey: think something happened in the edit

Dan: it looked like he'd died on the operating table.

He was there trying to clamp this artery,

Sidey: like they had actually saved him.

In actual

Reegs: fact, the makeup's incredible cuz he's like, he looks like white, like a, like a ghost.

Sidey: there's a guy earlier on that's been blown clean in half. Yeah,

Cris: That's where I, I, I, I had to stop because I, I. Had to get here. So I didn't, that's where I kind of,

Dan: Well there

Sidey: He

Reegs: And they drag him away and he's like, am I all right or something?

Cris: Since the guy with, with the, his guts out, I've not seen

Dan: Well there there

Reegs: the guy who loves, he's, he's going, am my ball's. Okay. I put this, I put a little thing, tweet

of it

Dan: are fine. There. There was another moment with you and McGregor cuz he finally gets Called into action.

One guy's got a cast on his hand. And, and so Grimes gets pulled in and he, he's really unsure. At one point he's like, fuck this. And I thought he'd run. I thought he'd leg it completely out the battle. But we see him turn back up again and he seems to have just grown into the roll by

Sidey: Yeah, he is. All right.

Dan: There's one guy who's got a gun jammed in the.

He can't get a shot off. There's a load of, you know, the enemy all ready to shoot and he runs out in front, like staring at him and starts shooting his g gun, knees changing. And just as like the. The Somalian guys are, are changing his gun. It's a race to see who does it. He mows a few down and then this RPG comes and it goes into like a, a pile of rocks and rubble behind him, covers him completely.

And you get this, I dunno, he must be a captain or a colonel or a sergeant. He's what was the, the guy's name? I've seen him in loads of stuff. Who goes to save you and McGregor at this stage and does him the coffee.

Reegs: Yeah, he makes him the coffee.

Dan: What's that guy's?

Sidey: Well, I kept thinking it was John Hamer. It's

Reegs: it's

not, it's it's not his Thai burrow. No. Is it Thai

Dan: I don't know. He's in loads of stuff. He's he's always plays a cop or, or a ranger or something like that. So he was, you know, pretty mad man. And you think, God, he is well hard, he's not gonna suffer, fool this guy. But then Grimes has just kind of pulled out a, a medal of honor moment, isn't he?

And, and lived to fight the, the tower. And he says, I hear like. Bells ringing and they're laughing about it and they end up making a coffee out of gum powder or, yeah, something like that. Yeah.

Reegs: That's in the abandoned place

where Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then basically whoever's left the, the extraction point is to leg it out to the stadium, basically.

They

call it

the Mogadishu mile. Yeah. And it's basically just, I mean, it's no kind of plan, it's just there's a street. You've gotta

Sidey: Well, they do get, they do get a call on the radio saying, right.

The Humes will be there in five minutes, so you just gotta hold on for another five minutes. And we have had the clock. Every periodically know they've been fighting for, you know, through the night. Yeah. It's been fucking brutal. And yeah, like you said, they've gotta do the ganish mile and they get back to the safety of the stadium and Eric Banner just throws a bit of food down, is like, right.

I'm going back in. And they're like, really? It's like, yeah, well the job's not done. You know, we just, and because the,

Reegs: When they stop, they have those glasses of water, suddenly all the shooting just suddenly stops and then they're just drinking these glasses of water.

It's like

Dan: in an airline just delivered to him.

Yeah. And, and

Josh

Harnett at that stage, he's talking to Eric Banner, who with this conversation you're going back in and he go, he's sort of best up,

Sidey: I think he says

Dan: I better do it as well. Then he goes, don't even think about it. I'm better on my own. And cuz he, I guess he just knew he wasn't up for, for more, which I don't blame

Sidey: Well, he'd, he'd only just been promoted that day, hadn't he? To, to lead the, his team

Reegs: was that only because some guy had had a fit? Yeah.

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: One of the other guys that had a fit.

Dan: I mean the, the huge and awesome size of what they tried to do to go in, drop down, create a perimeter, fight everyone back, do you know the operation? It's,

Sidey: it's like,

Dan: look, we are just gonna go in and do what we

Sidey: Cause there is a little bit more operating that goes on. Cause we have the the, the wounded being patched up and the general there who sent them all in and, and we've had various shots of him and his other.

Team, you know, trying to fucking

Dan: shift the pieces on the board and

Sidey: things around. He's like, fuck, you know, it's probably my fault. And some blood lands on the floor and he wipes it up and he literally had blood on his

hands. did you see

Reegs: yeah, I did see that. Yeah. I They weren't being very

Sidey: No, they weren't.

Then there's some text about the aftermath.

Reegs: Well, the aftermath was horrific. It was the thing that really I found impactful because the human cost in this, there was 19 American soldiers lost their lives and over a thousand Somalis. It's, that number is just,

Dan: it's mind

Reegs: it? is really when you, you know,

Dan: they're just so well trained. The Americans there and they've got all the best

Sidey: best. I was thinking about Team America. Well please. Quite a lot.

Dan: Yeah. Well, it. It made me just because it's so realistic or it's made to, to come across that way. I obviously never been in that situation.

It, it certainly appears that way, and just the, the awesome force of the Americans coming in and with their, you know, guns, they're brilliantly trained shooters, as you say, they're, they're killing, you know,

10 people each, each time they get their gun out. And

Sidey: for, but for what? They

Reegs: for what?

Sidey: thing was so futile

Reegs: like Chris said, I mean it, Somalia is not on next week's holiday destination list, is it? So, no,

Cris: no, they do make a good point though. When, when the, the arms dealer guy gets captured at the beginning. Yeah. And he, he actually says that this is not your country with you.

You don't understand this. And the guy says, 300,000 people dead. This is genocide.

Dan: Yeah.

Cris: That's why we're here.

You kill your own people and you treat them like animals.

Sidey: The fa because there has been a, a real long tracking shot. It felt long cuz it was so grim of the, the famine was like, unbelievable.

And there's all these shots of the people and the children just starving into death.

Cris: and the guys from the, they'd have the food drop from the un and then

Sidey: they're just go

Cris: General ibk or whatever. His people shoot.

Sidey: Yeah. yeah. They wanna be in control of that. So they'll

Cris: because they want the food and they want to control the food because that's how he controls everyone through hunger. Hunger, yeah. So that's the, the reason why all these people were killed.

Unfortunately, some of them were children, some of them were women. And it's the same like any other war

Reegs: But the problem is you take out one guy like that and another one just pops up and it, you know, it keeps going

Dan: comes into his place. But you do see towards the end, as they've had to run out a party of them from this place, there's not enough room in the Humvees to take him.

So they've, they've gotta continue. Jogging in behind who, who didn't really slow down that much to cover him, did they? They, these Humvees kind of went on and you had Josh Hart's. Kind of troop coming out, but then they go past all the local people. Some kids just appear in a dusty kind of environment.

They've been playing football or in this street, and then they get a real like round of applause and people cheering and whooping as they're jogging back into the stadium. Right. At the end, you think, well, these are the people that,

they're defending.

Reegs: That's a really surreal moment when the gunfire turns to cheering.

Yeah. It's really surreal at the end of that mile as they get into the camp. It frequently looks astonishing really, even now, like 20 years later,

Cris: Yeah, even now I thought it was 2015 or something. I couldn't, I remember that. It was fairly a while ago, but I didn't expect that to be that long.

Reegs: And the score is really good.

It's a hand Zimmer one as well, and it, you know, it makes an impact among just constant gunfire really. For a long period of this. This is a true story. I dunno whether we really emphasize that enough

Dan: or Ridley Scott was our director in this one as well, wasn't he?

Reegs: A lot of liberties taken.

I think Grimes character is the only one. Have you, did you read

Sidey: about it? Yeah.

Reegs: Yeah, the only one that. You know, he feels like the best character in the movie, the one that you understand the most. And that's because he was kind of fabricated cuz the guy, he was based on

Yeah. So,

Sidey: Yeah, he's currently serving time for child molestation.

Reegs: But, but anyway, there was

Dan: shot the wrong people, didn't they?

Reegs: I think there was a lot of artistic license in the movie, but it portrays what I think Ridley Scott was trying to say about what happened at this gruesome, gruesome battle. And yeah, I, I think this is a strong recommend, really.

I think

Sidey: for sure. I remember I'd seen it, but I don't remember thinking it was as good as this when I saw it the first time. I think I, maybe I wasn't concentrating, I dunno. But I thought it was fucking excellent when I watched it this week.

Dan: You know, every kind of decade has thrown out one or two of these films where there's a big military. I mean, it was huge at the time. Black Hawk down. And there were

Sidey: know the numbers?

Dan: Yeah. Give us the numbers.

Sidey: Budget for it was 92 mil. It made 173. I'm surprised it didn't make more to be honest, but

but it's a winner.

Yeah. I mean, the, to Get

that cast together would've cost a few ERs.

Reegs: you always get that with war movies,

Sidey: Yeah. People wanna be in it for some

Reegs: Yeah.

Cris: It's also, I have to say, it's been a great watch, great movie. I, I, obviously it's a war movie and it, but it's one of the, the reference war movies in, I think in history and from military people. Most of them say that is one of the best ones that is made from, from their tactical point of view, not just that is like Rambo, where he just kills everyone and there's loads of gun.

But also to this day, is labeled the most dangerous place to visit. The Black Hawk town where the helicopter crashed in Mogadishu. There's this guy on Twitter that I don't follow him, but sometimes it pops up on my timeline. He's one of the, these thrill seekers that he goes to visit the most dangerous places on Earth.

And he said that whoever he spoke to in Somalia, he's been Somalia three times. The only place he hasn't visited. He, he's visited the, the BA square, he's visited the former palace of. Some other dictator or warlord. And the only place where he hasn't been was where the, he the first helicopter crashed because it's for them, for, for, even for those who are there is almost like a mecca.

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: So

Cris: So he said that if there's any white people approaching, you are not getting out. So to this day, all these years, that's one of the most dangerous places on earth.

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: Wow.

Sidey: Josh, Josh Hartner went from Pearl Harbor to this. So, which one, I dunno, is close to?

Which one's better, but

I

think I'd probably just err

Dan: edge this one. Yeah. Well, yeah, for me it was a winner. I recommend if you're gonna see a, you know, a realistic military operation then this is the one, go for it. Even, even in the last sort of 20 years, I don't, none really stick out as, as clearly as this one probably, cuz I just watched it last

Reegs: week.