Katrinka Somdahl-Sands
Politics and Film
July 27, y
Visions of War
The topic of this weeks movie selection speaks for itself known as “visions of war”. Visions of War have two sides of it which is from a soldiers side and also a civilians side. The three films i chose from this topic were Blackhawk down, Jarhead, and American Sniper. The reason why i chose these three films was based on there current timeline of events. All three films related to modern warfare of events and have characters in close age approximately.
Black HawkDown is about, a major with the United Nations military operation in Somalia was with a peacekeeping mandate in Africa. After a masses of the peacekeepers were withdrawn, the Somalian forces decided to attack the American special forces. The special forces was originally in to help aid the people of Mogadishu until they were attacked. The story is based off of true event that occurred on October 3, 1993. Nearly one hundred United States Army Rangers who were under the command of Captain Mike Steele were flying in on black hawk helicopters. At this point the Rangers were trying to rescue two lieutenants who were captured by Somalian gun men and warlords. While in the process two black hawk helicopters were shot down by RPG’s. The movie goes on to show the bravery of the soldiers and how they wipeout an entire force to rescue there people.
The next film i viewed was Jarhead it follows a marine soldier by the name of Anthony "Swoff" Swofford. Swoff opens up the film through narrating his thoughts as different things occur. The film depicts him through basic training, The Gulf War, Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Throughout the film Swoff suffers from a lot of emotions. His emotions range from adrenaline rushes when he comes in contact with possible enemies, to sad thoughts of when he wonders if his girlfriend back at home is being faithful to him. The entire film is narrated by his character, which helps viewers understand the scenarios better that occurred in the film. In the end his character Swoff ends up calming down and fitting back into society after all the deployments he has served in.
The last film i watched was American Sniper which was my most favorable because its graphics and imagery. American Sniper replays the life of Chris Kyle an United States Navy Seal sniper, the character within the film is called Bradley Cooper. Bradley throughout the film plays a bad ass sniper who is favorited by his comrades due to his lethal skills. He struggles with maintaining a relationship back home with his wife and family. While overseas the Iraqi insurgents began to place Bradley as there prime target. Bradley beats the odds and makes it back safely from all his deployments safely. He suffers from PTSD but eventually overcomes it after seeking medical attention. During the course of his medical attention he volunteers to help other soldiers overcome PTSD. While taking a soldier the gun range the soldier loses his thoughts and kills Bradley. This film depicted the real life gentleman Chris Kyle who is known as the most lethal American Sniper in history.
The movies of course has a lot of action scenes with a lot firepower being used. The main characters are depicted as brave men that fight to the end. The depiction of the characters were great because they showed the actual thoughts of the soldiers. The mentality that was shown is actually what is taught within the army. I can relate to this since i’am an enlisted soldier