Need to Read the Book First

Rating: Null/10 (6 February 2002)

This is a very good movie -- however it is not as great of a movie as professional film critics have been said.
If you have not read the book ahead of time, this film may appear very, very disjointed and chaotic.
There are very good reasons for this:
1. The film depicts battle - which is always chaotic.
I like the fact that it is not quite as gorey and graphic in its depiction of violence as either GLADIATOR or SAVING PRIVATE RYAN were. The filmmakers made it accurately depict the quick horror of combat -- but they did not have long, lingering shots intended to gross you out and make you throw up.
2. The film correctly attributes events and comments to the actual different people who did and said these things.
There are so many characters, that there is simply not enough time for the audience to get to know and bond with any single particular character.
These hundred-odd soldiers from Delta, US Navy Seals, US Army Airborne Rangers, and the other US service branches who were all involved were basically all equally brave, and equally heroic.
If they had generallized more so the audience could bond with a particular character, they would have done a gross disservice to the men who fought in this battle.
Points of Note:
1. Powerful, visual cinematographic imagery, very akin to what Ridley Scott did in music and picture for GLADIATOR.
2. Accurate depiction of the very unusual issues in Somalia.
The Somali civilians tended to RUN DIRECTLY TOWARDS gunfire and fire fights, rather than running away to escape.

Even Civilian men, women and children were highly politically motivated and hostile to foreigners -- and just as apt to pick
up a weapon off a dead man and start firing as they were to be
used as a human shield by the Somali militia.
It was impossible for the American serviceman to know for sure what someone was going to do. The American soldier was left
with the very deadly and rapid choice of having to shoot now,
or risk getting killed along with his fellow soldiers in moments.
Anyone who was ever in Vietnam would recognize the double horror here. Shoot, and maybe screw something up on an international scale, or don't shoot and get killed with all of your unit.
The battle was indeed won, the mission was accomplished, and the cause of kidnapping Clan Warlord terrorists who were murdering hundreds of thousands of Somalis by confiscating and withholding food from their fellow countrymen, was indeed a just and good cause.
The war, however, was lost by the State Department and the politicians -- but it was a loss for both the US and Somalia. The battle made America and the international community realize that there was no economic justification for restoring peace and food in Somalia. It was cheaper and easier to let the Somalis kill each other. By rebelling against all foreigners, the Somalis killed off their last hope of any international hope of foreign investment and foreign aid to rebuild a nation blasted back into a post-apocalyptic stone age.