TEARS OF THE SUN is the quintessential movie about Americans rescuing the weak from their tormentors. Hardbitten Lt. Waters (Bruce Willis) and his team are sent to extract an American doctor (Monica Bellucci) and some Catholic missionaries from a bush hospital in danger from rampaging rebels. (Think Rwanda.)
Trouble is, the religious won’t leave their patients and helpers. The doc won’t go either unless Waters promises to take her mobile patients along on the helicopters.
The stoic, emotionally inhibited Waters seems unmovable. With his men, he defies orders and leads the doc and her helpless African followers (including the hope for the future, the surviving son of the murdered tribal king) through the photogenic jungle. (The actual location is Hawaii.)
This is a dark, violent film with some noble sacrifices and a humane ending that lifts the spirits like the soaring African music on the track. Director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) honestly shows the horror of tribal brutality but keeps the light low and the cameras discreet.
Quiet and Tears, films aimed at different audiences with vastly different viewpoints, are well-mounted, conceived and acted. Greene’s troubled Brit hero, involved with love, politics and God, is more complex. But Willis and his hard-nosed SEALS are The Magnificent Seven one more time, the embodiment of a lasting American movie myth that the strong find redemption in defending the weak against the forces of darkness.
But too much moral fervor can be a bad thing. It’s just not always as clear in real life as it is in the movies who the bad guys are, and if they have to be blown away.
For more movies like TEARS OF THE SUN (2003) visit Hurawatch.
Also watch: