A masquerade (mild spoiler)

Rating: 1/10 (30 May 2002)

I watched this film because I had heard it was "the best war movie since 'private ryan'"... ...ahem. I will not even justify such a ridiculous claim with a response.
I guess my biggest problem with the film is that Ridley scott doesn't know what he's trying to do with it. He opens the film with a line from Plato "Only the dead have seen the end of war". It seems a bit trite and pretentious, but overall, with a quote like that preceding the film, you gotta think that this is gonna be an extremely objective look at humanity's illogical partiality to war.
However, what follows is a blatantly American look at "American heroes" "giving hope" to all of those "foreign savages" off in somalia, back in that "little skirmish" of 1993. It is virtually 2 hrs of soulless combat footage of "good 'ol american boys" doing there duty and making a difference in the world, even if that includes killing 1000 somalis.
I will not go into the lack of emotional "OOmph" that this film had, or the frequently-proclaimed lack of "characterization".
All I will say is that it seems this film serves little more purpose than to rile the american spirit (contrary to what plato's opening quote would have you believe)...it has, rather, recoiled any residing american spirit I still had. It makes me sort of embarrassed and ashamed to be part of a country that refuses to look at a single thing (not even something as broad and chaotic as war) with any shred of objectivity.
Kyrie Eleison. All of us.