I saw the movie. It is awesome!

"...Black Hawk Down: It’s as close to real war as you want to get

By Todd Anthony

Sun-Sentinel Film Writer

If they ever make a war movie more riveting than Black Hawk Down, I don’t want to see it.

Imagine the intensity of the first 30 minutes of Saving Private Ryan sustained for more than two relentless hours. Like Spielberg’s heart-wrenching re-creation of the D-Day landing, Black Hawk Down puts you into a soldier’s boots as the bullets whiz by, rockets explode in your ears and comrades fall all around you.

Director Ridley Scott (Alien, Gladiator) builds pulse-pounding suspense atop Ken Nolan’s script adapted from Mark Bowden’s book about a real-life mission gone horribly awry. On the afternoon of Oct. 3, 1993, 140 or so U.S. Army Rangers and Delta Force commandos swooped into Mogadishu, Somalia, to "extract" two top lieutenants of ruthless Somali warlord Mohamed Aidid.

To put it mildly, things did not go according to plan. The mission was designed to last no more than an hour. But one minor mishap, combined with the determination of American forces to not leave behind any of their number, precipitated the bloodiest U.S. military action since Vietnam. When the smoke cleared the following day, 18 U.S. soldiers and up to a thousand Somali rebels (depending upon whose estimate you believe) lay dead...."

I have seen it twice, and will probably see it a couple more times before it leaves the theaters, then get in on DVD.

"Despite all the hard work by an army of craftsmen working on location in Morocco, the film takes the easy way out, subsiding into a thing of technical challenges met rather than attempting to probe the events at a deeper level."

-- Jay Carr, BOSTON GLOBE

Jay-Oh, Jay-Oh, the whole point of the movie, since you appear to have missed it, is that there was no "deeper level" to what happened at Mogadishu.

The American military should not be used as an international "Meals-On-Wheels." The purpose of the military is to kill people and break things, and that's what happened.

As one of the Delta Force members says, "When the first bullet goes by your head, politics goes out the window."

And as he said later, at that point, the only thing that matters is the man next to you.

it's like Ridley Scott decided to remake "Aliens", but misheard "some aliens" as "Somalians" - perhaps predictably, carnage ensues

-my favourite review, from ntk.net

FREEPER MOVIE RATING: FIVE (5) STARS.

Whoops... It was good, but six stars was an HTML fumble. Allow this correction...

FREEPER MOVIE RATING: FIVE (5) STARS.