Thinking of seeing this movie? RETREAT!

Rating: Null/10 (17 February 2002)

Seeing this movie was two or three or seventeen of the most excrutiatingly horrible hours of my life. Besides being so disgustingly violent that I nearly felt ill, director Scott uses the same cinematographic and directorial tricks he did in Gladiator -- can't he think of anything new? The wooden script is also full of offensively "patriotic" rhetoric that made me sicker than the physical blood and gore (of which there's plenty, don't worry).
Thousands of Somalis die, but they're just nameless "skinnies" (the derogatory term the U.S. soldiers use), while the 19 American soldiers who died in this tragedy of errors are practically martyred. And, as we learn from a sappy, leaden monologue, soldiers don't fight for politics or heroism, but just for "the guy next to you". Yeah, tell that to all the Somalis they fill full of lead.
Ugh, what a terrible movie. Not only will I never get that time back, but now I have to try to get to sleep with visions of severed hands and half-blown up men dancing in my head.