“Black Hawk Down” follows the same principle that makes movies like “Apollo 13” and “Thirteen Days” so incredible – reality can be more unbelievable than fiction.

In 1993, a Somalian warlord named Mohamed Farrah Aidid started seizing food shipments and starving his people. After 300,000 Somalians had died, the United States responded by sending soldiers with the purpose of delivering United Nations food shipments and taking out Aidid.

The mission was supposed to be quick and easy, but the United States met resistance and was having a hard time pinning Aidid down. Washington was getting impatient and demanded results. So, in an effort to capture two of Aidid’s top lieutenants, a special unit was assembled to enter the hostile city of Mogadishu and raid a meeting among Aidid’s men.

However, the U.S. forces, perhaps unprepared and overconfident, found themselves locked in a shootout with Aidid’s troops. Enemy rockets shot down two helicopters and a total of 18 Americans were killed as 70 more were injured.

The movie follows a few main characters through the battle, but spends no time trying to build them into superheros. Rather, they are regular men forced into action, which in turn made them heroes.

Josh Hartnett plays Staff Sergeant Eversmann, who is leading his team into battle for the first time. Ewan McGregor plays Company Clerk Grimes, who made coffee through Desert Storm, made coffee through Panama and still is making coffee. That is, until he is called into action. Tom Sizemore plays Lt. Col. McKnight, the veteran with the calm head who, even after being shot, goes back into battle.

McKnight wasn’t the only one less concerned with his own well-being than that of his fellow soldiers. As reinforcements were shipped into the city, one soldier with an elbow injury demanded to go. When he was told he couldn’t because of his cast, he pulled out a knife to cut it off.

Concerns over whether or not the United States should even be involved in the Somalia conflict were lost as the soldiers responded to their countrymen being under attack.

The battle scenes are non-stop and many are hard to watch, mainly because director Ridley Scott does an incredible job of planting us in the heart of the action. Unlike his lackluster action scenes in “Gladiator,” he nails it with “Black Hawk Down.” Scott uses a lot of hand-held cameras and everything has a very bleached look to it, with both adding to the realism. In fact, it serves as a reminder that the shooting and the gore aren’t occurring for thrills. Men really died out there and Scott doesn’t want us to lull into the it’s-only-a-movie state of mind.

As a film, “Black Hawk Down” deserves all of the praise it’s receiving, and it portrays a period in history that deserves to be remembered. Most of all, it is a story of survival, courage and man’s ability to persevere when it seems like all hope is lost. The themes are that which probably will ring a chord with our nation, now more than ever.

However, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, it also seems important to keep in mind what can happen when we underestimate our enemies and rush into unfamiliar territory without looking at the big picture. Who knows if the soldiers who died in Mogadishu would still be alive if Washington hadn’t been so impatient.

At the very least, though, their deaths should be a warning. And I hope for the sake of all the soldiers in Afghanistan that President Bush and the rest of Washington take a couple of hours and watch “Black Hawk Down.”Courtesy Photo

Orlando Bloom (center) and Josh Hartnett (right) are soldiers in “Black Hawk Down,” a true story about a 1993 military catastrophe in Somalia. The forces set out to deliver food shipments to starving citizens and eliminate a ruthless warlord.