Ridley Scott's new film, Black Hawk Down, is one of the biggest titles of 2001. It is also one of the more patriotic films of our times focused on soldiers caught in circumstances very similar to what may now be occurring in parts of Asia. Though it was produced for some $95 million before the September 11th attacks, and was thus trumped by real-life events, it remains a movie about today while centering on events from a few years ago.

Based on the book by Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down opens with a preamble about war-torn, poverty-ridden and starving Somalia in 1993. Acting as the leader of a United Nations peacekeeping force, the United States dispatched 120 men on October 3, 1993 to capture two lieutenants of the reigning Somali warlord, Mohammed Farrah Aidid. In so doing it was hoped that a genocidal moment in history would be brought to a close.

Despite plans for a brief raid on Mogadishu's marketplace local militia hemmed in Delta units and Ranger infantry leading to a 15-hour standoff. By October 4, 1993 there were 19 dead and 73 wounded Americans with perhaps 1,000 Somali casualties. The experience caused the withdrawal of Clinton-era support for peacekeeping in Somalia and has been considered a blight on American foreign policy ever since.

Never mind the complications of deploying military force on any sovereign foreign soil Black Hawk Down is not an overtly political film. Instead it is a meat-and-potatoes-and-fragmentation-grenade masterpiece of brilliant filmmaking. This should come as no surprise to anyone earlier convinced of Scott's directorial bravado dating back through Gladiator to Alien but Black Hawk Down sees the British moviemaker hitting his stride.

With jumbled camerawork, a familiar Hans Zimmer world music score, rapid fire editing, no-holds barred production design and the earnestness of showing war's destruction on human bodies, Black Hawk Down is entirely convincing once the raid begins. It's less successful in its first act spent setting up the group of itchy-fingered soldiers spurned on by cloudy domestic politics and African civil war. Still, screenwriters Ken Nolan and Steven Zaillian chose to focus on action over context and deliver on the promise of taking us there, live, and into the heart of street fights with an aggressive enemy.

The cast led by Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Tome Sizemore, Eric Bana, Sam Shepard, Rod Eldard, Jeremy Piven and Orlando Bloom is altogether appealing and sympathetic. Their collective status as a group of Hollywood's stars-of-tomorrow, aging character actors and recognizable, though difficult to place, performers makes the ensemble a collective hero.

Gone are questions of international intrigue the likes of which fill our nightly telecasts and cable news feeds. Instead the failures surrounding the Battle of Mogadishu are turned on end as a demonstration of soldierly pride, espirit du corps and the importance of men who fight for a collective fate raised to the level of a spiritual awakening.

In this simplification of a difficult and failed military operation the real genius of Scott's film shows through. The soldier is not to be hated for doing what he or she is asked to do. Instead the soldier is our proudest and most complete patriot willing to sacrifice life and limb in support of American ideals.

Not to be overshadowed by the sentimentality often at the center of other war movies Black Hawk Down demonstrates this value with visually stunning and technically precise filmmaking. I'm not convinced this is the movie of the year. Yet I'm sure it's worth the time spent in a theater seat watching the bombast of battle and the terror of potentially losing one's life.