Easily forgotten?

Rating: 4/10 (26 March 2002)

What was it Ridley Scott tried to tell me about war in general and the Mogadishu incident in particular?
Well, I'm not quite sure. The War movie as a genre is a tough genre for film makers to handle. To make a war movie a good movie, there's tons of stuff to consider. It's too easy to just tell a fast-paced story with a lot of gun-totin' soldiers running around wreaking havoc and/or defending themselves. War as an experience is at its core totally meaningless, and it is important to have that in mind when telling the story and (hopefully) conveying a message.
Ridley Scott I feel, has a problem here. The meaninglessness is too shallowly portrayed, mostly due to the one-dimensional characters in the movie. We never learn what the true thoughts of the soldiers are, except cliche one-liners as "there's only the guy next to you that matters" and "when bullets start flying, the politics go out the window". And making the Somalis card board figures only meant to be blown away doesn't make things any better either.
Still, the craftsmanship is top notch. Ridley Scott is known to paint "pretty pictures" and does so in this movie also. This has worked well for him, especially in movies such as Alien and Blade Runner, set in constructed fantasy environments. Maybe this is a problem when he is to make a movie set in a "real" setting. It has a glossy feel to it, and as such works against the realism he wanted us to believe in when watching his movie.
The bottom line is that this movie didn't make me think about the horrors of war, didn't touch an emotional chord inside of me the way Thin Red Line, Apocalypse Now or even Patton did. If you are to watch a movie which depicts a debacle as horrible as the Mogadishu incident, it is imperative that these elements are in place. If not it only leaves you indifferent, and indifference towards war is something we definitely don't need in this day and age.