Sorry, dude. You're wrong on this one. All Quiet on the Western Front didn't start with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand; Platoon didn't start with the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Mark Bowden is first and foremost a master of involvement through minutiae and Blackhawk Down is a prime example of this. That the movie even had Mohammed Farrah Aidid in it is a sop to those looking for broader context; the story/book itself wasn't even about the war, it was about a particular skirmish on a particular day. It isn't The Winds of War and never was. It isn't even Hamburger Hill.

It didn't have much story. It was one long gripping firefight serialized for publication in a newspaper. You're not supposed to feel conflicted. Casualty ratios during the Battle of Mogadishu were on the order of 100:1 in the United States' favor and the movie captures this quite effectively. It's about a small number of highly-trained soldiers against an entire city. A rag-tag, poorly-organized, poorly-motivated city, but a city nonetheless. And it's presented acutely from the viewpoint of those soldiers.

As to reception? c'mon. Before Black Hawk Down we had Platoon Saving Private Ryan and Full Metal Jacket. War was hell, but at least it was nuanced. Since then we've had Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty and American Sniper. What gray we had has become pure black and white.