Faithful re-enactment of a 1993 incident in Somalia: the eighteen-hour urban firefight that ensues when an intended neat, clean, in-and-out raid into the heart of Mogadishu (colloquially called "the Mogue," or just "Mogue") goes bad. It delivers a mixed experience, even, you might say, a mixed message: harrowing yet spectacular action, unglamorous yet gorgeous, rugged yet slick. The director is Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner, and on down through G.I. Jane and Gladiator), so the spectacular, the gorgeous, the slick are givens; the harrowing, the unglamorous, and the rugged must be counted as bonuses, neither to be taken for granted nor taken lightly. (The damage done to the bodies of some of the soldiers goes well beyond indignity.) Though some of the faces -- Josh Hartnett, William Fichtner, Ewan McGregor, Ron Eldard, and that latter-day Aldo Ray, Tom Sizemore -- are more familiar than others, there has been a concerted effort to steer clear of big stars, and to spread the dramatic interest evenly among the sizable cast: no one-man-armies, no centers-of-the-universe, no empathy-magnets, in this group. There is individual courage on display, and competence, and selflessness, but there is no villainy or cowardice deeper than the inevitable snafu. The soldiers are just that and no more: followers of orders. The virtual and inexplicable absence of blacks among them -- the total absence among the principal ones -- perhaps creates an unwanted and unfortunate Zulu-like image of a handful of civilized whites holding the line against hordes of savage blacks. But there appears to be no conscious point of view apart from the dizzying spectacle of it all, the sensory overload, the nonstop assault on eye and ear, the swirl of dust and bits of paper beneath the churning blades of the helicopters, the trails of smoke, the explosions, the spray of debris -- in sum, the big wow. Yet there are moments of genuine power, not to mention genuine skill. So, yes -- a mixed experience, but an intense one, an exhausting one, and, most importantly, a lingering one. (2001) — Duncan Shepherd