Did we see the same movie?

Rating: 9/10 (20 November 2005)

I'm curious...how does IMDb choose which review is to be the one displayed with the movie details as the "default" review. The review I read politicized the movie, which from what I could see was as near a factual telling of the Black Hawk Down incident as Hollywood could deliver, without it becoming a documentary. Black Hawk Down is neither "pro" nor "con" about war - it simply recounts what happened. For those that would like to paint the US forces as "cruel aggressors" and the Somalis as "freedom fighters," you would have to ignore the first ten minutes of the movie. The original intent of the Black Hawk Down mission was to try and capture two of the warlord's lieutenants, in order to stop the civil conflict. Remember, the Somalis were being systematically starved, raped, and murdered. The U.S. was there to try to feed the starving people and end the conflict - hardly a situation where the U.S. was acting as an aggressor. The Somalis warlords were busy killing anyone that stood in their way. Our soldiers were in the wrong place at the wrong time and were ambushed. Black Hawk Down the movie does a masterful job showing just what that ambush was like. The real question raised by the movie comes years later. Osama Bin Laden has stated publicly that the U.S. pullout of Somalia after the Black Hawk Down incident convinced him that the U.S. did not have the stomach for war, and would run from a conflict. Thanks to the Clinton administration's response, in 2001 we discovered just what a policy of "turn tail and run" would bring. Black Hawk Down is a riveting look at one military battle that had effects on U.S. policy - and terrorists plans that reached far beyond Somalia.