Originally posted by bigvalbowski
I'd argue the point about them helping hundreds of thousands of lives. How many Somali kids were left without fathers after that onslaught in Black Hawk Down? Thousands, literally. Only 19 American men died in that particular battle.
Aren't you forgetting that this was a mission to give food to starving people? The U.S. was defending innocents. Whether they went about it the right way once the innocents were fired upon can be debated, but that was still the situation. I think that seems like an adequate context to tell the story in. You're making it sound like we were invading the country.
Of course, this is not what the movie addresses. This is just what I got out of it.
And I think most people agree now that Vietnam was as pointless a war as America ever took part. It didn't help anybody. It just killed a lot of Viet-cong and a lot of young Americans.
Robert F. Kennedy said something to the effect of "___ lives were lost so that communism wouldn't be 3000 miles away instead of 4000." I'm paraphrasing. He was much more eloquent than that. But anyway, Vietnam
was pointless. I'm glad we agree about something.
I don't want to really argue about this movie. It provoked some really strong emotions in me. My temper boils just thinking about it and it gets me down for the whole day. I don't know when, or if, I've hated a movie so much. As an example of filmmaking, I felt it was very professionally handled, even if its script was below par, but as for its politics and its racial slurs, I feel it should have been condemned, or at least the American military should have been. People seemed to have glossed over the American military's mistakes in an effort to praise the soldier's heroism. America goofed up big time in Somalia and yet this was never highlighted. And in line with the world of today, I felt it would have been more beneficial if the movie attempted to find a voice for the Somali people instead of treating them like a silenced enemy.
Imagine that the Somali people killed in the movie were white. Maybe then you would understand that they are depicted just as "the enemy", as in countless other war movies. And it may have been beneficial if the movie took a more political approach to the situation, but it didn't. And it's a remarkable achievement.
And I've already addressed the racial slurs, which are in every other war movie, good and bad, that I can remember.