"Black Hawk Down" is a movie that will stay with me for a long time.

Ridley Scott brings the most terrifying look into war that has ever been caught on film. Think about the opening to "Saving Private Ryan" and then stretch that out to over two hours of time. "Black Hawk Down" is the first film in a long time that took me out of my seat in the theatre and made me feel like I was in Somalia dodging bullets and bombs.

The movie is based on the book by the same name and tells the story of a raid gone bad by US Rangers and Delta Force members. It happend in 1993 in Somalia and will stay in military history forever.

The movie stars Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore, Josh Hartnett, Eric Bana and may others, but to me it didn't matter who played who or what star was in the movie. The only thing that mattered was that these were American Soldiers in a most compromising position and I just wanted to see them get out alive.

Now, knowing before hand that soliers did get killed and that yes this was a true story I knew somewhat to expect. But once the movie starts Ridley Scott takes all that away. He doesn't shy away from the carnage and violence, he doesn't resort to fast cuts to make things seems worse than they are. He just plops the camera right in the middle of the action and it is up to you as the viewer to decide to turn away.

It is hard to put into words the feelings that this movie made come out in me. It put me through many different emotions. With all that is happening in our world right now, it makes this film even more powerful.

When we watch something like "Saving Private Ryan" or HBO's "Band of Brothers" or "Pearl Harbor" or "The Thin Red Line" and we see all the things the people of World War Two went through we get a little sense of what it must have been like. But when we see something that happend less than ten years ago in a situation that is much like what our soldiers are going through now, we get a real sense of what war is. It is not about politics or money or oil, in the end it is about the loss of human life. Whether the good guys or bad guys are dying, it is still one less living person in the world and when one dies many suffer.

I believe this is a movie everyone should see but not everyone will be able to stomach. It is gruesome and real and barabric. The violence is vivid but only because it needs to be.

See "Black Hawk Down", it is an important movie for our time.