This movie does what it set out to do...

Rating: Null/10 (11 June 2002)

This movie did exactly what it set out to do. The intention of this movie was to show the horrors of war, that's it. It wasn't a political commentary on the events surrounding October 3, 1993. It wasn't made to delve into the debate on whether America should have or shouldn't have been in Somalia in the first place.
There was very little character development in this movie. The main reason was that it didn't need it. The movie was a series of snapshots of people in terrible situations. If you need a complete background story to empathize with the soldiers in the movie, you are probably a very shallow person. The acting was excellent and while you may not have known a lot about the characters, you still fell for them as human beings. For those who feel they need more character development, read the book. I read it a few times before hand so I already knew a lot about the characters which may have helped me follow the story a little better.
The movie is very biased in its story, but what war movie isn't. Many reviews have faulted this movie and then said that movies like Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, and Saving Private Ryan accurately showed both sides. Very rarely in any of these movies were the Vietnamese or German soldiers even seen up close. They were usually just a figure in the distance that was gunned down. The only german in Saving Private Ryan that gets some real screen time(Spoiler for those who haven't seen SPR) kills Adam Goldberg's character and then taunts Upham about it until Upham kills him. There was no Nazi point of view shown anywhere in the movie.
The only flaw I saw with the movie was the amount of events that it cut out. most of the battle took place at night and the movie skips over that very quickly(probably because it looks better to show battle scenes during the day). Black Hawk Down did accurately and effectively portray the movie from an American point of view. Excellent movie 10/10.