Tears of the Sun

Movie Title: Tears of the Sun
Official Website (it might still work): Tears of the Sun
Rating (out of 10): 8
Reviewed By: Michael Stevens
Buy the: Video/DVD \| Soundtrack
The Review:

In war, sometimes you just have to do the right thing and disobey orders. I know the military advises against this (that whole chain of command thing they like to use), but it is often in the best interest of humanity that one should disobey orders. This subject is what is at the heart of Tears of the Sun, and it is what defines the hero of the film.

The film starts off the coast of Africa, a troubled continent, where a group of Navy SEALs has just come back from a mission where they evacuated US nationals from the now politically unstable country of Nigeria. According to the picture there has been a coup and civil war has broken out between the Muslims of the north and the Christians in the south of this oil rich country. Though not based on actually events, this is a very likely scenario at sometime in the near future as past upheaval in Nigeria has shown (e.g. civil war and that Miss Universe pageant fiasco last year). In the story the Muslim rebels that are taking over have started an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Christians, which includes foreigners. This is why A.K. Waters (Bruce Willis, Hart's War) and his SEALs evacuated the US ambassador from the country, and this is why they are being sent back in on both short notice and short rest. This time Captain Bill Rhodes (Tom Skerritt, Texas Rangers) tells them that they are supposed to remove a Dr. Lena Hendricks (Monica Bellucci, Under Suspicion) from a church run medical clinic in the Christian portion of Nigeria. She is their primary mission, but they are to also evacuate some foreign nurses and a priest if they choose to leave. They have to get in and out quickly because rebel forces are on their way to the clinic to eliminate everyone. Of course the good doctor will not leave with out the rest of her staff and her patients, since she too knows what will happen when the rebels arrive. To appease her, he tells her that anyone who can walk can go to the pick-up point and be rescued. However, when the choppers come, there is not enough room for the refuges, and the doctor realizes she has been lied to. So AK and his men leave with the doctor, but they soon turnaround after they see the carnage that happened at the clinic. Once they get back to the refugees they start leading them towards the safety of neighboring Cameroon, all without the support of the US Navy, against orders, and with a large rebel force right behind them, looking for them. Most of AK's men are behind his decision, but all follow because he is their leader. His men are radioman Ellis ‘Zee’ Pettigrew (Eamonn Walker, Unbreakable), Jason ‘Flea’ Mabry (Chad Smith), Demetrius ‘Silk’ Owens (Charles Ingram), Danny ‘Doc’ Kelley (Paul Francis, Pearl Harbor), Michael ‘Slo’ Slowenski (Nick Chinlund, Training Day), Kelly Lake (Johnny Messner, The Sweetest Thing), and James Atkins (Cole Hauser, Pitch Black). Along the way they finally discover why the rebels are so persistent, plus the doctor and AK somehow find a way to almost fall for each other.

Tears of the Sun was written by Patrick Cirillo and Alex Lasker. A few others in this Antoine Fuqua directed film are Fionnula Flanagan, Malick Bowens, Rodney Charles, Jimmy Jean-Louis, Sammi Rotibi, and Pierrino Mascarino. Fuqua’s last piece of work was Training Day.

This film is rather poignant in its subject matter, yet often beautiful in its visuals, which makes for a rather striking juxtaposition. The only downfall to the film is that many parts of the story I found rather hard to believe (e.g. that the US military would wait before assisting their own unit in a country whose air power would be extremely limited compared to just a single US carrier). Willis does well in this role, but it is obviously a role that he is accustomed to (the hero role that he has played in Armageddon or in the Die Hard trilogy). Be warned that the film really does live up to its ‘R’ rating with lots of graphic details of war and ethnic cleansing. In the end it is a good film with a tough lesson, and I give it eight couches out of ten.