Based on a true story, Black Hawk Down is about the 1993 mission by US Rangers and Delta Force soldiers sent into Mogadishu, Somalia to capture a warlord who has been interfering with the UN peacekeeping mission and causing the starvation of thousands of Somalis. Ridley Scott and producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Armageddon, The Rock) present a gritty action and violence-packed story that details the events as the mission goes horribly wrong and two of the choppers are shot down and the troops must fight to not only save the chopper crews but ultimately their own lives in a city where everyone is armed and they all seem to be out for the US soldiers.

Josh Harnett (Pearl Harbor) is excellent as the sergeant who's takes his first command during the mission and tries his hardest to keep his troops alive when everything falls apart. The large cast gives a wide array of excellent performances, and you can feel a real camaraderie with the soldiers. There's enough personal moments between the action sequences and the initial setup that the viewer will feel an emotional connection with the soldiers.

Scott's direction gives us an impressively violent measure of the events. He pulls the right strings in retelling the events and makes it quite clear that these are just normal men performing heroic acts. No one is bullet proof and you often wonder if any of them are going to get out alive. And when the film is over, you'll feel emotionally worn out, as if you had been there yourself.

Black Hawk Down is a serious and violent film that portrays a violent event that was only made worse by a lack of support and ineffective planning. While the film doesn't give all of the pertaining elements that the book Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War, by Mark Bowden, does, it gives the viewer more than what they bargained for. You'll see the ugly side of war in all it's gory detail.

- - Kinderfeld