Lackluster 'Sun' won't leave viewers crying in the aisles
By Jack Garner
Gannett News Service
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| TEARS OF THE SUN (R)
Bruce Willis stars as the leader of a squad of U.S. soldiers dispatched to Nigeria to rescue Americans trapped in a bloody civil war. As directed by Antoine Fuqua, it's part action flick and part humanitarian drama, and the split personality dilutes either aspect. Monica Bellucci co-stars. Columbia Pictures, 118 mins. |
(Fair)Though fictional, "Tears of the Sun" uses the reality-based "Black Hawk Down" as a model, with similar high-intensity battle footage as American soldiers are trapped by overwhelming odds in hostile territory. Many bullets fly, helicopters chop-chop and mortars explode. (And each one is ear-splittingly clear, thanks to first-rate, digital stereo sound effects.)
But director Antoine Fuqua (of "Training Day") tries to balance the elements of an action film with a humanitarian drama, and the film's split personality doesn't always jell.
The action is a long time coming — the first half involves much hiking through rain forests. But when it comes, it comes in spurts.
Characters too often hunker down in the jungle and stare at each other, mulling their moral imperative instead of acting upon it.
Or they contemplate obvious platitudes that would have been better left unspoken, like when a black soldier says of the black refugees "those Africans are my people, too."
Still, there is powerful stuff in "Tears of the Sun" — certainly enough inhumanity to warrant that emotional title. The refugees are trying to escape ethnic cleansing, being administered by a violent new regime. Christians and various tribal elements are being routinely tortured, raped and murdered.
In one particularly gruesome sequence, a woman's breasts are cut off to keep her from feeding her newborn. She dies as a result.
Lt. Waters has been dispatched to rescue the doctor, but he eventually allows himself to become emotionally involved, risking his life and those of his men to try to save not only the physician but a dozen or so of her patients.
The rescue is further complicated when it's discovered the sole surviving son of the deposed and murdered president of Nigeria has come along incognito among the refugees.
And that explains why the new dictatorship has ordered so many soldiers to pursue the refuges as they flee toward the Cameroon border.
But despite its potent nature, the film's thinly sketched central characters dilute the drama. We never come to know Waters or the physician or any of the other people — they're all symbols and never achieve a sense of humanity themselves.
Willis never delivers beyond his admittedly charismatic but tight-lipped action-film persona. This could just as well be "Die Hard in the Jungle," for all we get to know about the guy.
It matters because "Tears of the Sun" sets itself up as a serious statement on the idea of doing the heroic, courageous thing in a world in turmoil. And heroism plays better when it's the action of a fully realized, complex, flesh-and-blood person.
I suspect the film will soon be on the screening schedule at the White House, if it hasn't already been shown there. After all, its stated motto (printed on the screen) comes from the founder of modern conservatism Edmund Burke: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
On the other hand, when Waters is asked by his men about his decision to play hero at the risk of the mission, the best he can offer is, "When I figure it out, I'll let you know."
Rated R, with strong battle violence, language.
