About 6 months ago, a friend informed me of a website which contained a true story peiced together by journalist Mark Bowden. I really enjoyed reading the story - what happened was an terrible tradgedy that should never have happened. When I heard they were to make a film version of the story with Ridley Scott directing, I was instantly eager to see the film as soon as it came out.

The story is about a group of 130 American soldiers over in Somalia during 1993 at the Battle of Mogadishu - the longest sustained ground battle involving American soldiers since the Vietnam War. On October 3, 1993, they tried to abduct two lieutenants of a somalian warlord. They failed, and with a large amount of bad luck on their side (including 2 Black Hawk hellicopters being shot down), they nearly didn't make it out alive.

On their mission (which was meant to last an hour at the most), things started going wrong for them. Every time it seemed as though things couldn't get any worse, they did. All soldiers were constantly being fired at during the whole ordeal, keeping the American soldiers pinned down and delaying any actions they needed to take. These American soldiers weren't ordinary soldiers either - they were rangers and deltas, the elite soldiers. By the end, there were 18 dead Americans, 500+ dead Somalians, and many many more injured Americans and Somalians.

The movie was directed by mastermind Ridley Scott, who has been nominated for an academy award for his efforts in this film. Ridley Scott is well known for creating films with lots of depth which draws the audience into the movie, making them feel as though they are there. This film is no exception, and he has done a brilliant job. After such poor war movies like Pearl Harbour and even Behind Enemy Lines, it was good to see this one pull it off.

To make it even better, Ridley had an army of top quality actors to work with, including Eric Bana, Ewan McGregor, Josh Hartnett, Tom Sizemore, and Sam Shepard. None of the top quality actors got more screen time than anyone else, which is pretty rare for a blockbuster movie. You get to see what everyone is doing for an equal amount of time, which helps the audience understand what each group had to do to survive.

All actors put in a stellar effort, you couldn't spot anything wrong with their performances at all. The cinematography was stunning, as were the visual effects. The sound was done superbly, engulfing the audience to make it seem as real as possible. Nothing less is expected from Ridley and his talented team.

The first half an hour or so was used to build up the story and introduce everyone to the background of the event, and to introduce us to all the characters. After that, it's all action. Many people have described the movie as a "2 hour long version of the opening scene in Saving Private Ryan". This is the main reason people are in awe of the movie, if you like action films then you won't be able to take your eyes off this one at all.

One thing that was lacking in the film was the emotional side of things. Towards the start of the movie, you see all the soldiers having a good time, and when they're told about the mission, you get to see how alot of them react, which helped create the characters and let the audience know what the atmosphere was like before the mission. As soon as the mission and action started, you see very little to no emotions from the same characters. It would have been good to see this continue, to help the audience know how each character was changing throughout the mission, and why. At the end of the movie, it just feels like it was a sporting match and it's over, you feel detatched from it all.

Overall though, this was a very enjoyable movie, with some strong messages about how devastating war is. There is pleanty of action for those who like action films, however the lack of character development and emotion throughout the action scenes could be enough to make this a film only for action lovers. Definitely one of the best war movies made yet.

All images (C) Columbia Pictures