Tears of the Sun (2003)
Review by HTQ4
Film:
DVD:

Written by Alex Lasker & Patrick Cirillo
Original Songs & Music by Hans Zimmer
Directed by Antoine Fuqua
Starring Bruce Willis, Monica Bellucci, Cole Hauser, Eamonn Walker, Johnny Messner, Nick Chinlund, Charles Ingram, Paul Francis, Chad Smith, and Tom Skerritt

Features:

• Running audio commentary with director Fuqua
  
• "Writers' Observations" commentary track with Lasker & Cirillo
  
• Making-of docu: Journey to Safety
  
• Featurette: Voices of Africa
  
• Deleted Scenes
  
• Africa Fact Track
  
• Interactive Map of Africa
  

Released by: Columbia/Tri-Star
Rating: R
Region: 1
Anamorphic: Yes

My Advice: Rent it

Lieutenant Waters (Willis) is the leader of a tightknit group of elite Navy Seals. They have been charged with a rescue mission to get an African relief worker named Dr. Lena Kendricks (Bellucci) out of her location before the rebel forces can overtake and kill everyone in it. However, when his group gets there, she refuses to leave without every single one of her people. Against his better judgment, Lt. Waters tells her that they can only take anyone who can move under their own power. He and his squad manage to get the people to their rendezvous with the helicopters, but they only take Dr. Kendricks. When they fly over some of the villages that have been burned by the rebels, Lt. Waters changes his mind, turns the helicopters around and switches Dr. Kendricks out for some of the more critically wounded of her group of refugees. His mission has now become to get Dr. Kendricks and the rest of her people into the country of Cameroon to safety. However, one of her people is not who he says he is.

This movie just tries too hard. I understand that it's trying to tell the story of a people who have lived through horrible experiences for several decades, but the plotline really doesn't allow that to come through--mostly because it is unclear as to what plot points are important. Let me give you an example: at the very beginning of the movie, there is a key piece of plot information that is almost thrown away because of the nature of how it is delivered. That information is that the entire family of Nigeria's president has been assassinated. That's it, they are dead. Then that information is not used again until almost the very end of the movie. It turns out that little piece of data is important, but because there has been no supporting mention of it in the time between, the impact of it once it is revealed is completely lost.

That having been said, there is also an attempt to show the horrors of the everyday lives of the people of Africa, but there's only so much of it you can see with slow-motion shots and dramatic music before the impact is lost. This is because we, the audience, have already jumped way ahead of the director and his movie.

The performers themselves do a very good job. Willis is not in his typical hero role in this movie; there is a much darker tone to his character and it works very well for him. None of the other actors in the movie really leave you with the impact that Willis does.

The DVD is decent. For starters, there are two commentary tracks and a "Pop Up Video" style fact track to go along with the movie. Fuqua says, in his commentary, that this movie is about Man's Inhumanity to Man, which is just every bit as general a statement as the film is. His lack of specificity in his commentary parallels perfectly the lack of specificity in the movie. Lasker and Cirillo's writer's commentary is a little better in terms of content, but it is very sparse. There are vast expanses of the movie that go by without them talking at all, which only leaves you begging for more.

So, you get more in the form of the Africa Fact Track. This is a feature that I would like to see incorporated on a lot more DVDs because this presents the best content on the disc. There is information about the Navy Seals, their weaponry, and the suffering of the African people. The featurette titled Journey to Safety is the very type of behind-the-scenes feature that I hate. It's full of the cast and crew blowing smoke up each other's skirts and really doesn't go into much detail about their experiences of shooting the film on location, on the aircraft carrier or in Africa, which would have been much more interesting.

The Voices of Africa featurette gives us the opportunity to listen to interviews with some people who have lived the horrors of the African continent firsthand. It's great that their stories are on the DVD, it's just a shame that the movie couldn't get more of them across without overly sentimentalizing them. Don't miss this feature: it's quite worth it. There are also a handful of deleted scenes on the disc and this time, with very few exceptions, most of them would have been better left in. I think that they would have stood a better chance at making the impact that I think the director was shooting for. The interactive map of Africa is also good, even if it does assume that you already know quite a bit about African tribal culture and history. I didn't, but it was still interesting to read. That only leaves us with a couple of trailers on the DVD to round out the features.

I would say that the movie is worth watching for Willis' performance, but definitely not worth owning permanently. Rent it and have a nice night.