Has anyone seen it?  If so, what did you think of the rescue scene?

Saw it in the theater when it came out here in Finland, hasn´t come out on video yet. Have it on DIVX format on my computer though.

The rescue looked VERY realistic, the weapons handling, everything.

I have it on DVD. An excelent movie. I rank it up there as one of my favorites.

all in all, a good movie for the appearance of weapons.

but definitely one where i turn to the wife and whisper, "Enough of the lovin', on with the killin'!!"

heh.

scott out

Sorry, but in my opinion, the movie blew chunks.  The rescue seen was awesome though.  The rest of the movie was painfully slow and quite boring.

Reverend73

I agree with you Reverend, I thought it sucked horribly. But, only my opinion.

I saw it on DVD a couple of weeks ago, and I thought the film was OK. I could have done without the forbidden love sub-plot, but I guess the film's producers felt it necessary in order to attract the women folk to the theaters.

As for the hostage rescue sequence, I have three criticisms.
1) If you take the trouble to hump an M203 into the jungle, you should damn well use it when TSHTF.  
2) A small unit with no fire support or hope of reinforcement should leave the 5.56 SAW at home, and go with a belt fed .30 caliber (M-60, MAG 58, South African SS-77, Soviet PKM).
Especially in a jungle environment, where thick vegetation can cause penetration and deflection problems for a 5.56.  
3) If Crow is going to bother to take a handgun along, at least fit it with a sound suppressor, so that it is an effective tool for sentry removal. If not, leave it behind and save the weight for another rifle magazine or canteen of water

4) A cell phone with 911 on speed dial would be very handy to call the cops if things got to bad.

Tactics were so-so...
...I would have positioned the SAW at the base of the hill to maximize "grazing fire".  

IMO, not a great movie, but worth a look nonetheless.

The missing element to the rescue were frigging suppressors.

My wife even commented "Why get close enough to shank the guy, why not have at LEAST one guy with a supressed pistol to take out the gaurds."

Other than that, the tactics looked OK to me, especially for hollywierd.

the knife Crowe used sucked what was it a leatherman ..lololol come on use a real knife at least a k- bar.

I give it an OK.

Kinda long and dull at first.

And I wish it had a "better" babe than Meg Ryan.

On the plus side, it did mention how these "revolutionaries" that the liberals love so much are just kidnappers and drug dealers.

Suppressors?  Where the hell are they going to get suppressors out in the boonies like that?  Hell, why didn't they have an Apache attack helicopter just hovering around the trees for support?  Or why not death rayguns?

Can't it be just the case that they didn't have any suppressors?

And as far as the SAW gunner opening up on one guy, can't it be possible that the SAW gunner was the only one that had a visual or even the best position for a shot?  

Really bad, awful tactics.  Exciting movie to watch the first time, then when you think about it awhile you start wondering:

1)  Why didn't they use radio location to find that guy in the city whom they were negotiating with?  It would have saved many months of waiting for the fluke that the worker girl knew the voice.

2)  Why didn't they conduct the rescue at night?  NVGs and suppressed weapons would have been a huge advantage over the enemy who in this case had no electricity and no night vision gear.  

3) If a night raid was out of the question, at least have the good sense to bring along at least one suppressed weapon!  It would have saved them from having the SHTF the way it did.  If you can get your hands on a SAW, you can get a silenced handgun or MP5.

4) How about a sniper in the team?  The SAW gunner was good, but one or two good sharpshooters are better.

5)  Why did Crowe waste so much time setting up that claymore mine only to take out like two guys?  They could have been far down the trail or just ambushed them instead.

6)  They didn't cover the LZ very well, the guy with the AK, had he been at all intelligent, would have thrown the grenade into the helo.  It was right there out in the open with only one guy guarding it.

Some further speculation:
7) The guy who was kidnapped had several golden opportunities to escape and never took them (okay, he was a wimp).

8) The guy who got kidnapped was dumb--going into a dangerous place and not having any kind of plan of action.  He could have easily avoided the events leading up to his kidnapping had he read the signs of what was going down around him.  I would have run over the guy with the Uzi and then gotten the hell out of dodge before the guys rappelling down the hill could take control of the situation (hopefully!).  

Despite my criticism, I did enjoy watching the film and it was much better than what I've come to expect from Hollywood.  

I thought the movie was dead on.  McNab was the technical advisor as I understand it -- he was also tech advisor for Heat.

I negotiate for a living, and I found the negotiation scenes well done.  I was not bored from the beginning to the end of the movie.

It is the first film I have seen where they correctly depicted the use of a knife in sentry removal.  (Stab in through the side of the neck, then push down and forward and out.)

I would not have fooled with supressors either -- they aren't that quiet to begin with.  They are bulky, heavy, etc.

The only real technical error I saw was Crowe only squeezed the Claymore trigger once to set it off.

As far as using silenced weapons for sentry removal,1.silenced weapons are'nt always quiet enough 2.a well trained operative can dispatch a sentry with more stealth and control of the situation using edged weapons.I liked the movie.

Did anyone notice that the M-203 had that screwy Canadian military mount that sets the gun out lower than the American type mount?  I thought that was interesting.  It is still technically accurate, but damn, those things are ugly.  

Somebody mentioned grazing fire.  Grazing fire sucks compared to plunging fire.  The SAW gunner's position was very good, it gave him control of the entire field, and he was looking down.  The only way to hide from plunging fire is to get under something.  Besides, if he were at the bottom of the hill he couldn't cover the farmhouse.

Slow to begin with, interesting peek into the action of negotiating, and great end sequence.  Worth the $3.60 I payed to rent it.

...yeah, but there were about 150 BGs down the hill.  If they had crashed the party, grazing fire would have been very effective.
...and at such a close range (as they were), and with 5.56, there wasn't a whole lot of "plunging" going on.
They were, essentially, using the SAW as a sniper weapon.  
They needed a 60mm mortar (and the 203's)to provide "plunging fire".  Crew-serves and SAWs laying down the grazing fire.
Nowhere to hide. (It's not like they had to hump in)

Ka-Lick

Take it easy man.

Suppressors unavailable?  In a vacuum, maybe.  If you and I were scrambling around to find them in a foreign country.

But remember the arms room?  HKG36s, F/A M4s, the SAW, claymores, -203s and, presumably, ammo.

They weren't "in the boonies," they were in Valhalla!

Liberty ship-  Intersting, I thought he smacked the clacker 3 times like I was taught, but that may have just been what I am used to seeing, I'll have to check it again.  

NYPatriot why would you want to carry a (M-60, MAG 58, South African SS-77, Soviet PKM)

The SAW is a good choice for one person to hump. A .30 cal is much heavier, weapon and ammo. They didn't need the range and power of the .30 either. Usually those weapons have a crew of at least 2 people.

The 7.62x51 will punch through cover and armor that will stop a 5.56x45. That's reason enough to go with a 7.62x51 GPMG if you ask me!

Maggot, my reasoning is that in a situation where you are being air dropped relatively close to the target, weight becomes less of an issue. The benefits that a .30 weapon would have provided in their raid (ie: turning much of the enemy's cover into mere concealment) far outweighed the burden of a few extra pounds IMHO.

The only suppressed weapon I've ever seen operate was an mp5.  It was pretty damn quiet.  The guy knifing the sentry was what tipped off the bad guys in the first place--the sentry fired off a burst as he was grabbed from behind.

Don't know much about grazing fire vs. plunging fire, but I wouldn't want to be caught in either one!

Does anybody know where I can get the British camo and the assualt vest that Crowe wore over the internet.  I've searched a few times and can only find the crappy strap-covered type like CTD! sells.

Maybe I will check this movie out now. I saw Meg Ryan on the cover and thought, tree hugger, and figured it would suck or just piss me off.

No one's mentioned the opening scene in Chechnya, which I thought was great, especially with the Crowe voiceover briefing to his employers.  It looked just like Chechnya from photos I've seen, they had BMPs, Mi-17, T-72's.  Really quality scene.  

But yes, the movie was painfully boring overall.  I liked the rescue, and how the fellow captive was ex-Foreign Legion, but in-between, painfully boring.

welp, this is my first visit to this site and im pretty jazzed hehe, pretty cool, but ill be honest with you guys...im just a 16-year-old computer game nut and the only thing i know about guns are names and features about em (i.e. - magazine capacities, muzzle velocity etc.)  other than that i read about guns and such and have become especially fond of the FN P-90; im not stupid enough to base my knowledge on guns from the games because these games havent even gone as far as adding bullet physics yet, on most games i could nail a dude right in the helmet with a glock a mile away and probably have a good chance at killing him, i mean, give me a BREAK, anywho, i saw proof of life in theatres but didnt notice any of the "tactical errors" that you guys saw, i pretty much liked it 'cause it was one of the first movies ive seen where the bullets actually hit people when they were aimed at em (especially that dude with the m249 para WHEW that was sweet), unlike some old chow yun fat movies ive seen lol

Where do you live?  Maybe some board members can take you shooting, teach you safety, and get you on the road to getting a nice fiream.

I just saw this. Seems to me that an MP5SD would have been a better choice for guard removal than a knife. I also think the addition of a sniper would have been nice, but overall I enjoyed the movie. The worst part was the SAS hero hitting on the guys wife he was rescuing, I could've done without that.

It was the only movie I have liked in the last couple of years. I liked the scene in the house when the scammer turns around to see a Benelli staring at him.

I would argue that using the SAW to initiate fire was not a tactical error. You have an alert and wondering force of BG's.

The fire from the SAW causes the reaction "we're under attack from a force of unkown size and with with an unknown objective. A defensive response is best until we can sort out what is going on and counterattack."

As opposed to "Hey, somebody just fired from the shack. We're about to lose our hostage. There's probably only a few of them and we can take them."

The scenario that occured didn't draw attention to the shack or the objective of the attack. This gave the mission its best chance of success under the circumstances.

Don't mess with me. I'm the best after action guy around. [;)]