excellent adaptation of the book, really packs a punch.

Rating: Null/10 (2 February 2002)

I have read this book and was wondering how well Hollywood could translate it to the screen. The book is VERY well written and is one of the better documented and researched books on modern warfare. Rather than just a historical summary, Mark Bowden went out and talked to many of the soldiers who took part in these raids in Mogadishu in '93.
I had some fears because this was a Jerry Bruckheimer production, and with films like Con Air and the remake of "Gone in 60 seconds" to his credit, he is a bit spotty at best.
The movie was directed by Ridley Scott, who occasionally misses (1492) he mostly hits with his many gritty portrayals of people in tough places. He shot the film in Morocco, but one could easily believe that you were in "The Mog". The utter depravity and destruction of years of civil war were shown out in the rusted hulks of cars and the debris from destroyed buildings throughout the streets.
Some fast facts: Somalia had no government any longer, and 300,000 people died of hunger while rival warlords fought over the port of Mogadishu. One leader, Mohammed Farrah Aidid took control of the port area and stole all of the UN food shipments. In a starving nation, food is power and hunger is a weapon. The US and the UN sent in forces in late 92 to try and restore order and the flow of food. When the Marines drove onto the beach in their amphibious assault vehicles, CNN was there with bright floodlights to capture the action. The Marines eventually left, and the gangs started preying on the UN troops, with the slaughter of 24 Pakistani peacekeepers being the final straw. The US sent back in Delta Force and Ranger units, with the aim to capture as many Somali warlords and their lieutenants as they could.
The film opens up with scenes of the horror of the place, and how the deprivations of the people by the warlords gangs were being delegated to the UN to solve. Our Rangers were ordered to stand by and watch as civilians are slaughtered by Aidid's henchmen. The Rangers were only allowed to perform their operations. Meanwhile our leadership there was planning a raid to capture many of Aidid's top men.
The raid begins, and things quickly go to hell. It was believed that the helicopters were relatively safe because any weapon large enough to bring one down would be spotted, and the most common large weapon, the Soviet Rocket Propelled Grenade, or RPG, couldn't be fired up at the choppers, because the rocket blast from firing would severly burn the firer. The Somalis were able to adapt a sheet of tin to re-aim the back blast so that the firer would not immolate himself in his attempt to shoot the chopper, and the Somalis RPG teams hid the weapon, rockets, and blast chute under their clothes until ready to fire. The result is choppers down, and a thirty minute raid becomes a very long affair.
The film is a very good adaptation of what that kind of combat was like, as seen through the interviews of Mark Bowden. You see the confusion of the men trying to navigate through the narrow and confusing streets of Mogadishu. You see the horror of close urban fighting (the very fighting we avoided by stopping when we did in Iraq). There is heroism and loss. Somehow, this film brings off the big budget stars and high value explosions without succumbing the the typical Hollywood tearjerking emotionalism. There are a couple monologues, but they are expressed from both sides, Somali and American on why they were there and what they hoped to achieve.
Its my opinion, shared by many, that the US went too far in trying to be "kinder and gentler" in this affair. President Clinton would not allow us to send any armor or heavy equipment over there, so the most we had to use against the Somalis were Kevlar reinforced hard top HMMWVs (Hum-vees) and 2 1/2 ton trucks, which were unarmored. The consequences of those thin skinned vehicles going up against trucks equipped with heavy machine-guns and small cannon were disastrous. Clinton also vetoed the use of powerful suppressive fire weapons such as the AC-130 Spectre gunship. We had to rely on the UN for supporting armor or heavy vehicles, and with that came politicking and endless delays, which were only solved when we threatened to take the vehicles and put American crews in them. The fact that the Italian peacekeeping soldiers were openly passing information to the Somalis before each American raid didn't help their success.
It is no small irony that the very president who fled our country rather than serve it in Vietnam repeated the very same mistakes by trying to win the "hearts and minds" of the Somali while hamstringing the military who's job it was to make this happen.
This was a brutal, awful place that the UN tried to restore a bit of order to so they could try and keep millions of people from starving. I don't know what kind of real solution you can achieve when life is cheap, power comes from the barrel of a gun, and the leaders could care less how many of their own people starve. In the end, those with the guns and food are still the ones running the country. What a terrible waste.
RangeR "I mourn the dead and wounded from that day" BoB