10 War Movie Moments You'll Never Forget

10. "Super Six-One Is Down" - Black Hawk Down

Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down arrived like a visceral, high-contrast bolt of lightning when it premiered in 2001. Depicting the ill-fated 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, in which U.S. forces attempted to capture two key lieutenants working under Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid, Scott's film rendered modern warfare in stark clarity, taking the lessons Spielberg imparted in Saving Private Ryan and in doing so leaving a reminder that the horrors of combat were never old history. Technology had made war more efficient, and in turn, no less deadly.

What Scott achieves with Black Hawk Down is a true assault on the senses, showing the discombobulating nature of urban, close-quarters fighting and the scale of the damage modern weaponry can leave behind. Violence is grimy, bloody, and unceasingly shocking, but, in a way, the film is at its most effective when it lingers on moments of quiet. Imagery of U.S. Army Rangers being blown in half or getting picked off a Humvee-mounted 50. cal is ruthless, but we're left with such little time to process the machinery of terror unfolding that those moments of decompression soon take on greater significance.

Bullet casings, glass, and body parts stain the interior of a Hummer; Rangers stand desolate in a dilapidated building, night falling like a shroud of uncertainty - all of it filtered via satellite for the top brass to stare at in disbelief.

It is that very kind of satellite imagery that affords Black Hawk Down its most iconic image. Super Six-One, the first Black Hawk helicopter, is shot down by an RPG, and ends up crash-landing at a crossroads. We're treated to a birds-eye view of the chopper's last moments, as its rotor slowly comes to a halt and the last remnants of dust are kicked into the air, before the filter changes to surveillance footage beamed through to the U.S. base in Mogadishu's airport. Distant, and yet so real. This is modern warfare.