Black Hawk Down (2 DVDs)

Black Hawk Down is a 2001 film by Ridley Scott. The story is based on the experience of American soldiers in the capital of Somalia Mogadishu. The soldiers are given a mission to capture a warlord. The plan goes wrong and when more soldiers are sent to rescue their colleagues under fire from the enemy things go mad, the soldiers come under fire from hosts of enemy combatants. I like this film. It is one of the best war films I have seen. The fight scenes look real. As the shoot out happens the cameras give a very close up of soldiers in distress and bullets ripping their bodies apart. There are no big characters in the film. Actors ...  Read the complete review

One thing that doesn’t often appear in War films are defeats and mistakes made by American forces without retribution. In 2001, British director Ridley Scott got the go ahead to make a film based on the American’s actions in Somalia. With a true story to build the film around this had a lot of appeal upon its release at the cinema. With the backing of big time American producer Jerry Bruckheimer it seems the more surprising that a film portraying a military cock up by the American’s was backed so heavily by Hollywood. When the US soldiers are sent to Somalia to aid the U.N. peacekeeping operation in Mogadishu, Somalia during 1993. On the third of October 100 ...  Read the complete review

It is early October 1993, Somalia in east Africa. The country has been the place for major problems; civil war and famine have wreaked the place and left several thousand civilians dead. The country is run by a series of local warlords, one of whom Mohammed Aidid Farrah has been taking food supplies from the red cross for his own use. The US Government did not like this, so sent the best of the best army troops to sort out the situation. They come up with a plan to get two of the warlords out of there in a quick hit and run attack. The whole thing should take less than an hour, but it goes wrong somehow. Black Hawk Down tells the real story behind an ...  Read the complete review

In the past, I have always tended to avoid war films. You know the type of thing that you end up watching on a Sunday afternoon, John Wayne or some such hero overcoming massive odds to save the bridge, beach head or whatever. They are all the same, a couple of guys up against a massive force who have yet to learn how to shoot straight. Then along came all the 'Nam movies and they brought a realism to the genre that had not been there before. People were savagely killed without the time to deliver a few pithy words for the folk’s back home. You left the cinema thinking how lucky you were not to have had to go there. Then for a long time there was ...  Read the complete review

(Film only) Ridley Scott's 2001 movie tells the story of the Battle of Mogadishu, an attempt by American special forces units to abduct two senior members of the Somalian militia, lead by General Mohamed Aidid. For the soldiers involved the initial omens are far from positive: Mogadishu is a geometric, planned city, seemingly designed for the purpose of staging ambushes. It is also filled with an angry, dissident, and heavily armed populous. On the contrary, the US mission is hamstrung by a Washington politik that refuses the mission's overt need for widespread aerial and ground support. The mission, originally due to last no longer than an ...  Read the complete review