A riveting and deeply disturbing movie

Rating: 9/10 (9 February 2002)

As a lietenant who has undergone two years, albeit compulsory, military training, I can identify with the reality that such a war scenario in "Black Hawk Down" will someday surface in my life.
Should we return for a rescue mission? Can we live with the fact that we had sacrificed soldiers for the safety of others? How many need there be before it is justified to return? Can we live with soldiers who fight for us knowing that should they be down one day, their own troops may not come back for them? If so, can they be psychologically prepared to still fight?
These disturbing questions rattled through my head as I watched the rapid escalation of violence and loss of life that accompanied the decision to return.
The first vivid scene of the apparent death of the first soldier after he fell off the chopper rifled home the psychological shock of the closeness of death that no amount of simulated military exercise can bring. The following two scenes that were to me the best two were those of the realization of the team of two soldiers that they Humpheys were not coming back for them, and the scene when the Somalian mob descended upon the soldiers in the chopper.
The feeling of being alone in a violent crowd, just waiting to die, must be unbearably lonely and desolate. "Politics are immediately forgotten the first moment a bullet whizzes by your ear". Well said.
A good war movie to show those political leaders what not to put their citizens through, and to think very carefully over their decisions before the dreams and hopes of bright young men perish amid the violence of war