gritty & realistic

Rating: Null/10 (15 June 2004)

whereas saving private ryan introduced the hand held camera mode, this film is its culmination.
there is a great deal of shooting in this movie but for once it is an integral part of the action. war and combat are very violent and you need to properly portray that in a film like this, especially one based on true events. if you don't know, an RPG is a rocket propelled grenade, and there seemed to be a lot of them in the hands of the somali warlord's camp. by the way aidid, was a real bastard. there seems to be a type that, given the opportunity, will use conflict to make an advantage for themselves and sacrifice the freedom and lives of their fellow citizens to maintain that advantage. collaborators during WWII, east bloc dictators, and office politickers are counted in this group. aidid used the famine in somalia to establish a private army which would confiscate the food aid meant for his starving countrymen. the U.S. under clinton stepped and sent delta force soldiers to establish some order and capture aidid. this attempt ended in tragedy and this film depicts the circumstances and events of the raid.
I remember the news about the failed somalia mission and to this day I feel that blacks in Africa have no one but themselves to blame for the fact their continent is the most backward, undeveloped and violent today. rwanda genocide, civil war in congo, massive corruption in nigeria are a very few examples of the situation. you try to help them and all that happens is they drag your soldiers' dead bodies behind a pickup truck to shouts of glee. I know this, I saw the news footage.
8/10