Great Movie! And very close to the book.
I didn't remember the paid spy with the cross on the top of his car from the book though, but its been a while since I read the book. The same guy showed up in the room with Durrett after his capture, or at least it looked like the same guy.
I noticed the belt of blanks in the M60. You could easily see the crimps.
Also, did you notice that almost all of our guys were shooting M-16's in semi-auto mode. I didn't hear or see any bursts. Was that realistic, maybe to save ammo, or was that a flaw in the movie?
It also looked like many of the Samoli vehicles had M2 50cal machine guns on top. I didn't think they had very many American weapons, though I'm sure they had some. I thought most of their weapons were of Soviet decent. Otherwise, very accurate movie. Must have had some good technical advisors.
I liked the History Channel show, but they were inaccurate in some of their dramatized scences, as well. For instance, there were a couple of times when one of the soldiers would be talking about someone opening up with the 50 caliber mounted on a Humvee, but the dramatized combat scene would show an M60 mounted, not an M2.
As far as the effectiveness of the 5.56, I have heard that the military study pretty much concluded that the short barrels on the CAR 15s used by some of the guys cut velocity enough that the characteristic tumbling of 5.56 round did not occur. Therefore, just a small .22 cal hole that didn't cause much bleeding. Plus, since most of the skinnies were high, they didn't know they were supposed to go down, so shock didn't play as much of a role as it normally would. I think the full-sized M16's did ok.