Lotsa lotsa action

Rating: Null/10 (11 August 2003)

When I saw this movie in the theaters, I walked out thinking to myself that I had just paid to see a two hour action scene. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it somewhat. Upon first watching though, it's kind of hard to tell exactly what's going on. They don't really make too much of an attempt to humanize too many of the characters and when they're running around later getting shot at from every direction, you really won't be able to tell who's who. I think this movie is definitely worth seeing at least twice because in my case, the story didn't really hit me until I saw it the second time on DVD. What's amazing about the movie is that even if only half of what was portrayed was remotely true, it still shakes you up to think that these things go on in our world. One thing I found interesting was that the movie isn't necessarily a gung-ho pro-American movie. Yeah, it's patriotic but the film serves more to show how well-trained the soldiers trying to escape the city actually were. I found the movie to be really intense. I mean, you get about twenty-five minutes of set-up and then the rest of the movie is literally a huge battle with the citizens of the city. While the ratio of American kills to Somalian kills was pretty low (something like 19 Americans to over 1,000 Somalis), you still feel it when the Americans take casualties. The scenes with the helicopters going down and the aftermath are really grim and the thought of actually being in a conflict like that makes one feel a bit tense. The battle scenes are very violent and you will not be bored watching this movie. In fact, you may think it has too much action. I recommend the movie strongly, at the very least for the technical design and Ridley Scott's direction, which is always spot-on.
RATING: **** out of *****.