No point, no moral center, nothing to make this worth watching

Rating: 1/10 (17 June 2002)

Why do we need an action film about the US fighting in Somalia? What do any of us gain from propaganda? If every US soldier fights not for a cause but to stand by his buddies -- as nearly every scene and certainly the ending insist -- then what difference does it make if he's killing people in Somalia, Vietnam, Europe, or anywhere else? The portrayal of "the skinnies" by Ridley Scott is despicable. Very few even have faces; instead they have screaming mouths and war cries to reinforce their inhumanity in the viewers' eyes. Of course, we don't want to think about"the skinnies"too much; after all, that could slow down the action -- and the action has to be the whole point. (Don't ask, though, why Scott has time to make us hear about Ewan's coffee preferences.) The Somalians aren't real, and neither are the US soldiers. Scott manipulates all the characters to skew the telling of history as he wants us to see it. Scott isn't just "on the side of the soldiers"; he's expecting his audience to give up their any critical inquiry into the nature of war and the immense power held by our military leaders. Not one soldier in this movie is enraged at the political decisions that have led to so many lives needlessly lost. Is Scott saying soldiers don't think - they just obey? And is he saying we should admire soldiers for that? If so, he's participating in the kind of film making that many of our country's enemies have been perfecting for years.