I was fairly disappointed in the movie. Granted, most of the story was one long battle sequence and that was done fairly well, but I thought the way the tale was told precisely mirrored the folly that led us into Somalia in the first place. The first hint was with the opening scenes, and the director's apparent need to portray Aided as some kind of mini-Hitler. In reality, and in Bowden's book, Aideed is simply the leader of the strongest clan in Somalia, and is thus a convenient scapegoat for the morality-obsessed Americans to vent their outrage on. One of the terms that the, and US media in particular use that irritates me is the overuse of the term 'warlord' -- I'd be interested in seeing a review of 'Braveheart' that continually refers to the main character as a 'warlord' instead of a patriot or whatever.
Another annoying cop-out was the same old attempts to come up with simplistic blame sound-bites so that the average viewer can feel morally superior to the people on the ground. The AC-130 gunship/forgetting one's LI goggles are used here -- even tho neither would have solved any of the real political/strategic problems with our being involved there. Bringing lots of stuff is a classic American strength, but I think all too often it becomes the end instead of the means. They ought to make the next war movie director read A Soldier's Load and the Mobility of the Nation. Ten times.
The last thing that got my ire was the closing credits, where the director does not mention that the US let all of the captured leadership cadre go in exchange for the pilot. When we get defeated, hollywood shouldn't pretend its some kind of draw or victory. Somalia was a defeat, simply because the US did not have the will to win -- and there was no reason that it should have.
