A war movie that's too close to home

Rating: 10/10 (21 June 2003)

"Black Hawk Down" made it's motion picture debut in limited release in early December of 2001 but didn't open nationwide in my hometown until late January of 2002 where after the attacks of 9/11, people started to take precaution on how to protect themselves from terrorist threats. Airport security became enhanced, many people started buying action flicks from "Die Hard" to "True Lies" on how to protect themselves and fight off anybody willing to repeat the same incident.
"Black Hawk Down" however would show audiences what it would be like to send young troops in another country to deal with somebody else's problem just before a year later it would be too close to home.
Ridley Scott (Alien, Gladiator) directs this epic about the 1993 incident in Mogadishu where genocide is happening to the civilians and U.S. soldiers are there to rescue the people and take down their top target. Josh Hartnett (Pearl Harbor) plays Sgt. Eversmann, a young soldier who believes he's in it to save the people and hope they have a better future. Other soldiers have different agendas while being stationed in Mogadishu until they are called by General Garrison (Sam Sheppard) to go inside the city where all hell breaks loose. The townspeople are now in war with the U.S. soldiers where the film cuts to different sections with different actors from Tom Sizemore who leads one part of an infantry by cars; Ewan McGregor plays Grimes who joins in with William Fitchner after being separated from his squad sees what it's like to be in the war rather than typing on computers.
After movies like "Saving Private Ryan" came out in theaters, directors wanted to make realistic war movies and Ridley Scott does one hell of a job without having to bring in a sermon lesson. The list of actors feature an all-star cast from Josh Hartnett, Tom Sizemore, Ewan Bremmer and William Fitchner who all worked in "Pearl Harbor" and do much hell of a better job than in "Harbor" while having other cast members from Ewan McGregor, Sam Sheppard, Jason Issacs, Eric Bana and more.