Not quite the whole story

Rating: Null/10 (6 November 2002)

Spoilers!
The Battle of Mogadishu, 3 OCT 1993. The failures of General's Garrison and Montgomery are sort of glossed over as the actors that play them sort of go glassy-eyed a lot of the time. There's just the 'full responsibility' line at the end credits, and only for Garrison. The whole chain of events is confused. And it suggests just more the LA riots if more of the looters had been armed with military rifles or civilian equivalents, chasing away a few LAPD stragglers. No justice, no peace, kind of thing, as one of the clansmen actually says to the captured pilot, Durant.
The blame also has been placed, in reality, on Les Aspen and Bill Clinton for refusing to equip forces with Abrams tanks and Bradley APCs. They didn't want to send the wrong 'political message' to Somali civilians, and refused to take the blame for poorly equipped forces, after the fact. But of those 500-1000 or so killed by American/UN forces in the 'extraction' effort, most surely were civilians, who would have been at less risk if the UN forces had gone in better armed with a better plan of attack. It would have been less bloody and safer for all concerned.
As it is, you have Montgomery knowing that armored units were required for house to house street fighting and getting the troops in there, at least 10th Mountain or whatever support. You had Garrison go in with intelligence about on a par of that preceding the Battle of Little Big Horn. All the tanks and tracks in the stadium were not brought up to the ready, when requests for just that and more had been almost demanded by the very generals ordering the 'extraction', days and weeks before. The attention span of those generals must have been less than that of the proverbial knat not to at least incorporate what armor they had available. And that insanity is utterly missing from the movie.
At any rate, the movie is a record of almost point by point how not to conduct a military operation in a house to house urban scenario, where the enemy is even just a mob. In fact, what organized 'gang activity' did face the UN forces may well have been not just armed, but directed on the ground, by members of Al-Queda cells. And the movie, furthermore, does present a somewhat clean version of the battle, I would guess. There aren't enough helicopters. The high shots of mobs in the streets were probably a little thin compared to the reality. Imagine more people, fewer guns, faster running, more confusion, etc. Just lots more people in the streets. The smoke and dust were probably worse. It was hot. They should have all been soaking in sweat. And so on. That is, the real situation was probably much worse that it is made to appear on screen, if one could imagine. 500-1000 Somalis were killed. 1000 bodies is a lot of bodies.
There's also something missing that you see in other war films. And that's the gutty change of plan, the improv, the something entirely new to turn it around on the enemy. In fact, in reality, that was missing in the actual battle. They didn't give and take. They didn't have the quick retreat and regroup plan. And as the plan started to splinter, and units started to get isolated, and the intel failed, the one and only plan forced an increasingly confused execution. They didn't adjust. And I kept wondering not so much why the black hawks hovered so much, cause they did in the real battle (and it was stupid, and not just for lack of a smokescreen, or counter-measures, cover fire, etc), but why without the tanks and apcs the units still tried to run around the outskirts of town? That didn't make sense. And I don't know if it actually went that way. Why not get the cobras or a black hawk to use the cannon and rockets to clear a path through the furniture/car wreck blockades, and just drive to the crash sites? even if all they had were humvees.
So, I think it's unfair to say one can't care about the characters. But they seem painted almost too mechanically, as men with guts, and bravery, but little imagination or personality; almost as if they were too green, or too young, to exhibit such. Things go wrong. And they just keep going wrong with them, instead of using their heads or being resourceful. The doc does well in that. But you almost don't see enough of him, and there are plenty of wounded.
So if I'd fault the movie, overall, it wouldn't be for lack of characterization, but because I spent a couple of paragraphs explaining what the movie left out it would be lack of backstory or narrative. That's what hurts. People can't really see how they get from there to here, or what is really happening. It's all a loud muddle of small arms fire and grenades, and blood spurting. It may be the grunt's point of view that Scott was after. But maybe the movie suffers for that narrow tunnel vision. It might have been better to present the movie as a flashback from a board of inquiry, or committee investigation, to point to areas of contention, poor planning, horrible lack of coordination, exclusiveness and professional 'jealousy', and all the rest. Maybe even just a voice over. I don't know. Then one would cut to the action to see how things went so predictably wrong in hindsight. Not an uplifting film, in either case. But it might have been easier to understand.