Ridley Scott's terrific depiction of the events of the Battle of Mogadishu kicks off Operations week as we watch 2001's BLACK HAWK DOWN. I thought I was being so clever picking this, with the disastrous events of Operation Gothic Serpent in which US troops extracted General Mohamed Farrah Aidid from the Somali capital at a terrible human cost providing the backdrop to a memorable scene of impromptu battlefield femoral artery surgery. If I'd patted myself on the back any harder at the idea of picking a movie that featured a memorable operation within a memorable operation I'd have broken my own spine so naturally when a listener offers up an example of an operation within an operation within an operation for us to discuss in this week’s main episode it crushed my fragile ego to oblivion. Bravo listener! Also bravo to Ridley Scott, who delivers up a still spectacular looking by today’s standards action masterpiece with an incredible cast of, well, too many to mention really but Tom Sizemore, Eric Bana, Ewan McGregor, Orlando Bloom, William Fichtner, Jason Isaacs, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Jeremy Piven, Ioan Gruffudd, Sam Shepard, Ewen Bremner, Ashton Kutcher and Tom Hardy debuting here as 'Thomas'. You can see the influence this had on video game franchises, with everything from its saturated colour palette to its pro-military but anti-war themes copied comprehensively in first person shooters. Another strong recommend from the Dads.
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Until next time, we remain...
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