Sorry but it's the wrong type of black...

Rating: 6/10 (11 August 2005)

The extras seem to be incredibly miscast in this film. Anyone who lives in the UK, well in any of the major cities, will soon realise that people from Somalia just do not look like the people shown in this film. Presumably all American's assume that anybody from Africa (and Somalia is in Africa so we got that right) look just like African Americans ie they can claim their descent from west Africa? Thats a bit of a fatal error for Sir Ridley Scott, who hails from South Shields (my home town), which has had a Somali community well before he was born.
While those "mosques" look more like those you would find in Morocco. Did Ridley do a "bulk" location deal with the Moroccan government on his way to shooting "Gladiator" too?
Watching the film now in 2005, perhaps one can view it as a bit of substitute "reportage" for what the Marines'are actually up to in Iraq or what they have to put up with? As we never actually get to see what they "do" on TV or what it is actually like to be an American soldier there, only the aftermath? While we can similarily question the US presence in Somalia and their armed forces, just as we can in Iraq today. Was it genuinely a humanitarian effort or just an excuse for their continued existence to the American taxpayer after the "evil empire" had faded away....