Ma-alinti Rangers - The Day The Rangers Came.

Rating: 6/10 (3 October 2008)

In an attempt to deliver a serious blow to the warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid, American special forces on the 3. October 1993 went in to the capital of Somalia to catch two of his Lieutenants. Aidid was to some extent guilty in making the civilian population starve and an estimation of around 300.000 people died from this.
The Achilleus' heel of the American forces was, that they would leave none of their fellow soldiers behind. The turning point in the mission is then when a "Black Hawk goes down". This makes it necessary to secure the crash site and bring all dead and wounded back and in this process the American forces looses the initiative and speed and makes it possible for Aidid to counter-attack. The fighting escalates further and about 18 hours later 18 American soldiers are dead. This incident apparently made Defence Minister Les Aspin resign and also made USA more cautious about getting into conflicts abroad - at least until the Bush Doctrine.
Journalist Mark Bowden decided to write a book about the incident and later Ridley Scott decided to make a movie based on the book. When you have read the book you will notice that a lot of odd and sometimes funny anecdotes from it are present in the movie. Although the book as well as the movie tells the story from the American soldiers viewpoint the book tries to show how the fighting affects the civilians in Mogadishu. I think that this is an important aspect when you are trying to show what war is about. War is not just about the (American) soldier - war is also about the "enemy". Who is he? Does he care for those who are killed? Does he feel that he protects something of importance? Does he act aggressively because he has been manipulated or maybe even because he feels that he has something to revenge? Without his perspective any description of a war will be superficial and this is in fact one of my critical claims. Both from an ethical point of view but I also think that the story itself suffers from this one-sided perspective. I think that the movie feels quite "lengthy" and that it wouldn't necessary be so if we had gotten some of stories from the "other side". I think that there are always moral dilemmas involved when the decision is to go to war (as well as when you don't) but that this movie doesn't deal with them. Why not? Moral dilemmas are interesting and showing them isn't the same as not being loyal towards those soldiers who went in and put their life in danger. Why not show some of the more controversial stories from the book? If you spot an enemy trying to advance towards you, who at the same time holds a woman in front of him as a shield - what do you do? A Delta Force Ranger knows what he will do - and can you accept that? And of course this example isn't just a product of my imagination.
A large part of the movie consists of American soldiers trying to secure the Black Hawks who has crashed. We also follow the American convoy around in Mogadishu, for a long period, who has a difficult time finding the crash sites. These parts of the movie could, in my opinion, have been minimized to create more progression in the story.
There are several highlights though, like Mike Durant, Shughart and Gordon defending themselves against a big crowd.
Still this movie doesn't get a top rating from me as it didn't contain enough contrasts; too much repetitious fighting.
Regards Simon
Ps. When you read reviews that gives max score check to see if the user has made more than one review. If not consider the possibility of a lobbyist. If you agree consider putting this post scriptum at the bottom at your own reviews.