From the first 45 minutes of the gritty and unrelenting true war film Black Hawk Down we are introduced to a strong ensemble playing heavy weight roles and are about to encounter angry Somalis in an intensive ground battle at Mogadishu during October 1993. In order to capture two Somali warlords under the power of treacherous Mohammad Farrah Aidid, Delta units and Rangers embark on Black Hawk helicopters to Somalia. When there, they are shot at successfully resulting in the biggest ground battle the Americans have seen since Vietnam.

 Josh Hartnett as Sergeant Matt who leads the air forces is the odd one out of the soldiers, an idealist, but who acts more like the captain of a College basketball team. The rest of the cast, particularly Eric Bana (Chopper) and Sam Shepherd provide the hard edge of the military persona with chip on your shoulder take no nonsense harking back to Clint Eastwood in Heartbreak Ridge. This aggression is complimented by the bravado atmospherics of a U.S. base in Pakistan.

 Without sentiment, moralising or patronising patriotic fervour events proceed to the magnificent gut wrenching war sequence, spanning a day, captured in over an hour of screen time. Saving Private Ryan managed 20 hyped minutes of this type of intense mayhem, and Black Hawk Down shuns the sermonising, as was the case in Ryan, and provides emotional wallops of a naturalistic, no holds barred view of war that is a never ending horror and that only death will see its end.

 Director Ridley Scott’s now marked use of the medium, as in Gladiator and Hannibal, shows off expertise of camera, editing and sound combined with a mixture of moving classical and a punchy modern soundtrack, accentuate the blasts, noise, blood and ruthless unforgiving nature of war, depicted with authentic abandon that will test the most cast iron of audiences.