A film that I wouldn't have bothered to see unless I'd won free tickets to see it (which I did, without really knowing what films I'd won tickets to). To say that it was a gross blood fest, would be an understatement. I came very close to walking out, near the end. I'd had about as much as I could take, but thankfully it finished before too long.
The film deals with the USA's involvement in Somalia a few years back, where they tried to oust a warlord, supposedly so that humanitarian aid could get through to the people they were trying to aid.
After a bit of the usual army chums background plot, it falls into the blunt depiction of how everybody is shooting at everybody else, trying to kill them before they kill you. And while quite disgusting, is what war and soldiering is about (killing anything and everything that might try and kill you, and being killed indiscriminitely by someone else with the same aim of self preseveration, with the reason that the war actually started being the last thing in your mind). A soldier is just another war machine, rather than a person, and this film tends to depict that rather plainly. Lots of people do die in this film, some quite gruesomely, most utterly uselessly, which is probably more realistic than a lot of people's ideas about war.
In some ways, I think that a few of the gun loving dickheads should see this film, if only to try and make them realise that using a gun pretty much means that eventually one's going to be responsible for killing you. Likewise, to those who think that it's a good idea to storm in and take over some country.
Although the film is “well done”, I think you'd have to be pretty depraved to “enjoy” this film. Entertainment isn't the style of its presentation, and there really isn't any “heroing” of the characters. There's a fair bit of showing the stupidity and uselessness of war. hich is about its only saving grace.
By the way, the United States failed miserably in their task; and far too many people died, on both sides.