The film, Black Hawk Down, opens with a black screen and the simple phrase, "Based on actual events."

The film that follows tells the story of the Battle of Mogadishu — a covert U.S. military mission in which an elite force of about 120 American Delta units and Army Ranger infantry were dropped into Mogadishu on Oct. 3, 1993 to abduct two of Somalian warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid's lieutenants.

The mission was scheduled to take 45 minutes to an hour but after two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down within 20 minutes of each other, the mission turned from an assault to a 16-hour rescue mission.

The entire film focuses on the battle and rescue. The audience is thrown into combat with the soldiers. There are few details given of the "other" lives the soldiers lead — we know very little, in most cases nothing, about the men's families, friends, hometowns.

"What struck me about Black Hawk Down (the non-fiction book by Mark Bowden on which the film is based) was that it was a war book that put the reader in the soldier's boots," said Ken Nolan, who wrote the screenplay for the film.

Nolan's statement is true and at times makes the film very hard to watch.

This isn't your classic Steven Spielberg war flick. Not to undermine Spielberg's talents, but Black Hawk's director Ridley Scott made a different type of war film. This may be due to the actual events the film is based on; it may be Scott's style coming through — probably it's a combination of both.

There is blood, guts, and lots of guns, explosions, and fire as the audience is invited into the hostile setting. This is not a sugar-coated version of war — it's two straight hours of combat.

"The story of combat is timeless," said Bowden in his book Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War. "It is about the same things whether in Troy or Gettysburg, Normandy or the Ia Drang. It is about soldiers, most of them young, trapped in a fight to the death. The extreme and terrible nature of war touches something essential about being human . . . ."

The filmmakers decided that "the story will be seen through a number of eyes in a large ensemble," said Black Hawk's executive produce Jerry Bruckheimer in a press release, "but to a great extent through a young Ranger sergeant, Matt Eversmann (Josh Hartnett)."

The entire ensemble cast was amazing. Headlined by Hartnett, it included Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore, Eric Bana, William Fichtner, Ewen Bremner and Sam Shepard.

No one actor stood out more than the rest — each put forth authentic, heartfelt performances. This may have been due to the fact that all of the action and combat scenes were done live, using blank explosives, bullets, and snipers, so the actors experienced and heard everything from the helicopters overhead to gun shots, instead of having the sound and visuals added later by computer.

The soldiers aren't made out to be martyrs — they're heroes. There's a big difference. The movie isn't tied up into a pretty little bow at the end; Private Ryan isn't saved; there is no romance or love story between a nurse and a soldier.

Instead, the film ends with 73 Americans injured and 18 Americans and hundreds of Somalians dead.

Black Hawk Down is not an easy film to sit through, yet I highly recommend it. It will affect you; it will make you think. Hartnett said in a press release, "It's one of those stories that when people watch it they'll say, 'My God, I can't believe this actually happened.' "