God's already left Africa
A review by Mike Shea Movie Rating: ( 0) DVD Rating: ( * * * * · )
There was an argument against X-men saying that a comic book movie didn't have the rights to use the holocaust in a background scene for Magneto. They were wrong. It built a villain that was more believable than the typical cookie-cutter world dominating insane bad guy. Tears of the Sun shows us horrifyingly vivid torture, violence, and inhumanity for the sake of a Bruce Willis Die Hard war movie. It doesn't work and has no right to drag us through such horrors for such a lame movie.
Tears of the Sun is based within the darkest depths of "ethnic cleansing" in Africa. Read George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" and learn why terms like "Ethnic Cleansing" need to be destroyed. Tears of the Sun is very much like the overused terms Orwell speaks of. It wraps torture, rape, and murder in a nice pretty blue package with a yellow bow on top. Tears of the Sun has an idiotic plot that uses typical Hollywood stereotypes and insults the audience after brutalizing us for almost three hours. After four days in a swamp our beautiful damsel in distress still has perfectly pink lipstick that won't smear at all no matter how many bullets you fire at her. Tie in a "he's not only the president's heir but also the tribal king that can save the world" plot twist and any credibility this movie had is destroyed. I should have known how bad this movie was going to be the minute smarmy Bruce Willis steps off of the helicopter. Not since Tom Cruise rode up on a big phallic motorcycle in Days of Thunder did I laugh so hard at a character introduction. Bruce Willis is a better actor than this.
The DVD of Tears of the Sun got better treatment than the movie deserves. It had a clear 2.35 to 1 16x9 picture that showed off the perfect skin and shiny white teeth of Monica Bellucci. It has a directors commentary, but listening to Antoine Fuqua fellate himself over this celluloid roadkill didn't sound very entertaining to me. There is no DTS track, but really, who cares. I sure as shit don't.
I am normally opposed to ever skipping or searching through a movie, but I did so through the last ten minutes of Tears. What I found was a great clarity of how thin the movie really was. Flashes of a young handsome prince being cheered on by his loving people built a perfectly meaningless and impossible ending. Add in a scene of touching closeness between our scarred scraggly hero and the young pretty 20something white woman he saved from the clutches of this barbaric place with hints of a possible relationship in the future. If it ended with Bruce in a pit being tortured by African rebels or in Leavenworth for disobeying about fifty direct orders, it would have been a far better movie. The typical Hollywood ending just perfectly bookended this thin transparent movie who bit off more human suffering than we should have been forced to chew. Tears of the Sun is worthless crap.
From: Olli ( happyday989@hotmail.com ) on 15 September 2003
Subject: Tears of the Sun
I am inclined to say that Tears of the Sun is a US military propaganda film with the gung ho moral that all goodness comes out of the muzzels of American guns (and, of course, from the bombs of the U.S. Air Force). Hardly ever have I seen a film in which all the brutality, inhumanity and atrocities depicted appear so senseless. Instead of an honest attempt to show, analyse and explain all types of human - humane as well as inhumane - behaviour in extreme situations, all we see is an inconsistent story in which the most interesting aspect - the main actor's transformation from a stone cold "aye aye sir" special ops professional to a soldier with a human touch never receives a halfway decent explanation. Everybody in the film is just good or bad, there is no in-between. All American soldiers are heroes, all rebels are merciless and beasty butchers. Just when they are about to knock the staffing out of Willis and his gang, the bad guys receive their just punishment by being deep-fried in napalm. Full stop, end of the story. That the air cavallary in their rescue helicopters appear almost together with the supersonic jets from the same aircraft carrier off the coast - the latter show up like a deus ex nachina, just in time to barbecue the attacking rebels with their napalm bombs - only adds insult to injury, and makes an already incredibly bad film completely worthless. Who would dare compare this piece of trash with Copola's Vietnam drama "Apocalypse Now". And who would dare say that Bruce Willis - certainly in one of his worst roles - could match the calibre of a film giant such as Marlon Brando or even Martin Sheen.
Tears of the Sun = tears in everybody's eyes for the money they have to pay for the cinema ticket.
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From: Mike ( mike@mikeshea.net ) on 19 September 2003
Subject: Sucked but...
Yes, this movie sucked. However, I don't think it would make a very good propaganda film. The movie's whole story is built around violations in following the orders of a superior. Look at movies like Black Hawk Down and you don't see that there at all. Luckily I've never seen it compared to Apocalypse Now. There is no comparison at all.
I know an Army major who used to show his green toops Full Metal Jacket as a film to get them jacked up on the military. I bet Kubrick would have felt the same way about that as he did hearing that gangs had taken to wearing codpieces and derbies to kick the hell out of bums in London after Clockwork Orange.