Propaganda

Rating: 7/10 (26 January 2002)

Let's put it this way: the soldierly fraternity antics at the beginning were bland and incomprehensible; Americans never missed their shot (except when firing at one another), and are accorded 5 minutes death scenes; the locals, on the other hand, are killed at a rate of 5 a minute, if not more, and are seen charging headlong into withering fires to be shot like they were Zulus at Isandwanah, or just running aimlessly about, again to be shot, nameless and faceless. They may have no notion of tactics but they were certainly not that stupid or suicidal (which kind of remind me of the final combat scenes from Saving Private Ryan where German elite Waffen SS troops were running around aimlessly too). The dialogs of course were ludicrous: the locals got to say endearing lines "killing is negotiating" while Americans had: "tell mom and pop I fought well". And by the way, they looked nothing like Somalis but were clearly West Africans. So in closing, I expect this movie to serve for years to come as recruiting video for the US military, and that's about it.