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"It would be a disservice to [the servicemen] to act like what they had done was not horrific," says Wallace. "We're not there to make a recruiting poster. I like the fact that Americans have been reminded that there is a cost for freedom." Ridley Scott describes Black Hawk Down as a film that "rings the bell on a good military, saying 'This is what we do, this is why we go in, and we go in essentially with all the right intentions.'"

His producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, even suggests that the mission in Somalia--widely seen as an exercise in military futility that cost 18 American lives--is not a disaster when viewed through today's lens. "If right now we went in and got two of bin Laden's key advisers, killed a thousand Taliban members, and lost 18 men," he says, "it would be considered a success."

But producers and studio execs relied on more than anecdotal arguments in deciding whether to alter their release schedules. "You go, 'How do we figure where we're going to be provocative and relevant, versus a bummer for the audience?'" says producer Douglas Wick, whose Spy Game focuses in part on the Middle East conflict. "Did we only have to say that the CIA is perfect and infallible? Was there any room to say that it's a bureaucracy that has good years and bad years?" To find out, Universal test-screened the film in late September. "We asked [audiences], 'In light of recent events, do you feel it's appropriate for films like Spy Game to be released in the next two months?'" says Marc Abraham. "And 80 percent said yes."

But while Fox rushed to release Behind Enemy Lines, MGM decided to delay its World War II drama Windtalkers, starring Nicolas Cage as a soldier serving as a bodyguard to a Navajo code talker, from November to next June, citing fears about its ability to market the film adequately. "Even if this is a great movie for this moment, what if three days before the release, something happened and the networks went dark and we couldn't advertise it?" says MGM vice chairman and COO Chris McGurk. "The themes of this movie are going to be as relevant in June as they are now. If you have a weak movie that you think you can help by an opening because, oh, jeez, it's incredibly patriotic and people will go to see it, yeah, then maybe you move it up into this environment."

Wallace, who says he agrees with Paramount's decision to keep We Were Soldiers in March 2002, shares that sentiment. "If we were to move our date in response to what anybody perceived as a wave of patriotism about the Sept. 11 events, we would be saying in a sense that the film we have made is topical and not timeless," he says. "Our movie is not a fashion statement."

Revolution Studios chairman Joe Roth, who's coproducing Black Hawk Down with Sony and hopes its new Dec. 28 date will lead to Oscar nominations, doesn't buy that argument. "If in fact you're going to be negatively impacted by events, better to deal with it now, because at least we can see what the events are like today," he argues. "Who knows what the events are going to be like six or nine months from now?"


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