director
Antoine Fuqua
screenwriters
Patrick
Cirillo
Alex Lasker
producers
Ian Bryce
Michael Lobell
Arnold Rifkin
cinematographer
Mauro Fiore
music
Hans Zimmer
editor
Conrad Buff
cast
Bruce Willis (Lt. Waters)
Monica Bellucci (Dr. Lena Kendricks)
Cole Hauser ("Red")
Eamonn Walker ("Zee")
Johnny Messner (Kelly Lake)
Nick Chinlund ("Slo")
Charles Ingram ("Silk")
Paul Francis ("Doc")
Chad Smith ("Flea")
Tom Skerritt (Capt. Rhodes)
Malick Bowens (Col. Sadick)
Fionnula Flanagan (Sister Grace)
Cornelia Hayes O'Herlihy (Sister Siobhan)
Pierrino Mascarino (Father Gianni)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 118m
u.s.
release: 3/7/03
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official website
other antoine
fuqua films
reviewed on this website:
- king
arthur
- training
day
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Steven Spielberg's Saving
Private Ryan has had a terrible, lingering effect
on war movies. Technological whiz-bang -- the ability to craft,
with digital effects and digital sound, a bone-cracking you-are-there
aesthetic -- has replaced personality; the soldiers themselves
seem digital (and sometimes are). Tears of the Sun
(nice-sounding title, having no apparent meaning in the movie)is
the latest example of war-as-toy-soldiers. Bruce Willis, as the
stoic, no-nonsense Lt. Waters, sets the tone; he expresses so
little that the performance could be taken as a parody of dead-cool
machismo if there were any evidence of wit. The rest of the cast
follows suit; there isn't even, for God's sake, a wisecracking
soldier who serves to lighten Waters up a bit. Most funerals
have more laughs than this film.
Of course, Tears of the
Sun, like its hero, doesn't have time for levity. The mission
is simple and single-minded: Waters and his men are to land in
the Nigerian jungle and rescue a volunteer doctor (Monica Bellucci)
from an area endangered by approaching rebel forces. No more,
no less. But she doesn't want to go -- at least not without the
people she's helping. Waters' response is a firm negative, but
when he sees piles of massacred villagers he has a change of
heart, signalled by Bruce Willis' change of expression from blankly
grim to grimly blank. The men go back into the chaos to get the
innocent people out alive, engaging the rebel soldiers in the
process.
The action, as constructed
by director Antoine Fuqua (Training
Day), is the usual hash of Cuisinart editing and "moody"
photography. An early scene in which Waters rises up from the
river and startles a native is so dimly lit that I guess it achieves
its objective -- to establish that Waters and his guys are so
good they can see in pitch darkness. (Oh, for a shot of one of
the soldiers tripping over something.) The battle sequences are
mainly a matter of sneak attack and retreat -- no strategy, just
cut and run. The rebels are faceless targets, except for the
big cheese, who strolls into churches wielding a machete. Like
Black
Hawk Down, the movie regales us with the heroics of a
(mostly) white American platoon picking off anonymous black savages.
The movie runs nearly two hours
yet allows itself no moments of R&R in which to get to know
the soldiers or the people they're protecting. The cast includes
at least two firebrands given nothing to work with. Monica Bellucci
can be a dark, electrifying presence, as seen in Brotherhood
of the Wolf, but you wouldn't know that from her noble, perfect-doctor
performance here. (Couldn't she, like Ben Kingsley in Rules
of Engagement, say something like "Thank Christ! Get
me the hell out of this shithole"?) Eamonn Walker, late
of HBO's recently concluded prison drama Oz, has the ability
to play a character who could lead his own platoon with
unquestionable moral authority, but here he's reduced to the
role of Waters' right-hand man; he's the black guy who affirms
the white hero's decency by assuring him he did the right thing.
Then there's Bruce Willis.
Stone-faced and stubble-headed, he seems to be out to prove to
Vin Diesel -- who's been called the new Bruce Willis -- that
the old Bruce Willis isn't decommissioned yet. I have enjoyed
Willis far more in far worse movies than this -- like, say, 1999's
Breakfast of Champions, a botch of Kurt Vonnegut's novel
that Willis believed in enough to finance most of it out of his
own pocket. Did the failure of that film scare Willis back to
tried-and-true mainstream junk? With the money he made from Tears
of the Sun, will he foot the bill for another lunatic
risk? Experimental failures can push the medium forward; movies
like Tears of the Sun are stuck in neutral.
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