el presidente Highsteppa
TRIBE Member
The dipiction of the botched snatch and grab mission in Somalia is a bit of a peculiar film - it's pretty much critic proof, as many of the regular conventions that are standard in most films (ie. character developpment) are thrown out the window in favour for a graphic recreation of what happened. The same can be said for the book, as it was more a minute by minute account of the mission from many different perspectives, accumulated by eyewitness accounts as well as participants in the skirmish.
By all means this is a pretty crazy movie, as it often puts you the viewer into the thick of things, giving a quasi-documentary feel at times of what it's like to be in the middle of a firefight, while the situation of the Americans goes from bad, to worse, to dire. Ridley Scott does a great job of creating a ugly situation, but showing off the technology at hand, the situations that the Delta Forces and Rangers faced and how utterly insane and dangerous warfare can be. It is one of the best recreations of a ground combat situation committed to film.
However, this is pretty much all the film is, aside from the odd war rhetoric that the film offers up (ie. "When the first bullet whizzes by your head, politics and all that shit go out the window...") but not a whole lot else. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but might not appeal to some viewers as the film is essentially two hours of shouting, shooting and running. It is first and formost a recreation of war and very little else.
But the film does astonish at a technical level as it does make a battle scene look incredibly busy, complicated and dangerous. Shoot outs are intense and bloody, and the wounds that some of these people suffer (although scaled down, as I'm finding it very astonishing that some of the people who got shot survived their wounds) is graphic, ugly and very, very bloody. This is not a movie for squeamish viewers.
And the film does get all it can out of a very, very good cast. Ewan MacGregor, Tom Sizemore, Josh Harnett (this makes up for Pearl Harbour), Jeremy Piven, Jason Isaacs, Ewen Bremner, William Fitchner and Sam Sheppard all turn in excellent performances with what little screen time they get to act with, most making an impression and making themselves as very identifyable as the film unfolds.
I did like this film a great deal. It was a good movie for what it was: a war movie and a minute by minute recount of what happened (but abbreviated and altered a bit from the book, which I do recommend reading) from a U.S. point of view. It is not a flag waiving rah-rah America film, which many seem to see it as being, it is a depiction of American soldiers in a frantic situation and dealing with it.
James Duncan
AKA el presidente Highsteppa
TRIBE MOVIE CRITIC
By all means this is a pretty crazy movie, as it often puts you the viewer into the thick of things, giving a quasi-documentary feel at times of what it's like to be in the middle of a firefight, while the situation of the Americans goes from bad, to worse, to dire. Ridley Scott does a great job of creating a ugly situation, but showing off the technology at hand, the situations that the Delta Forces and Rangers faced and how utterly insane and dangerous warfare can be. It is one of the best recreations of a ground combat situation committed to film.
However, this is pretty much all the film is, aside from the odd war rhetoric that the film offers up (ie. "When the first bullet whizzes by your head, politics and all that shit go out the window...") but not a whole lot else. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but might not appeal to some viewers as the film is essentially two hours of shouting, shooting and running. It is first and formost a recreation of war and very little else.
But the film does astonish at a technical level as it does make a battle scene look incredibly busy, complicated and dangerous. Shoot outs are intense and bloody, and the wounds that some of these people suffer (although scaled down, as I'm finding it very astonishing that some of the people who got shot survived their wounds) is graphic, ugly and very, very bloody. This is not a movie for squeamish viewers.
And the film does get all it can out of a very, very good cast. Ewan MacGregor, Tom Sizemore, Josh Harnett (this makes up for Pearl Harbour), Jeremy Piven, Jason Isaacs, Ewen Bremner, William Fitchner and Sam Sheppard all turn in excellent performances with what little screen time they get to act with, most making an impression and making themselves as very identifyable as the film unfolds.
I did like this film a great deal. It was a good movie for what it was: a war movie and a minute by minute recount of what happened (but abbreviated and altered a bit from the book, which I do recommend reading) from a U.S. point of view. It is not a flag waiving rah-rah America film, which many seem to see it as being, it is a depiction of American soldiers in a frantic situation and dealing with it.
James Duncan
AKA el presidente Highsteppa
TRIBE MOVIE CRITIC
