Every Bruce Willis film seems to toe the line between being an enjoyable movie and being a piece of laughable trash. Two of the three \Die Hard"" movies, ""Sixth Sense"" and ""The Whole Nine Yards"" all succeeded with Willis because they used Willis' limited acting range to their advantage. In that mold, ""Tears of the Sun"" surprisingly makes an enjoyable movie out of African foliage, rain and Bruce Willis' camouflaged face.
The storyline is simple. Lieutenant A. K. Waters (Willis) and his Navy SEAL team are dropped into Nigeria. A group of rebels has staged a coup and is now killing hundreds of people. Waters' mission is to evacuate four U.S. nationals. All four refuse to leave. Dr. Lena Hendricks (Monica Belluci) eventually agrees on the condition that all her native patients also be taken out. Waters complies, leading the group to the chopper rendezvous point. Leaving the natives, he forces the doctor onto the chopper. They fly over the village they just left, now torn apart by the rebels. Inexplicably, Waters tells the choppers to turn around. He and his team fill the chopper with the old and the young natives and then plan to lead the rest on foot.
The film's script is very simple and basic. What brings a new dimension to it is the cinematography and the emphasis placed on it. The first act of the movie moves very slowly, but once the mission gets going, the screen is rich with wonderful camera work and minimalist exposition. Willis has few lines, but the ones he has would seem ridiculous if they had been played any other way. Director Antoine Fuqua (""Training Day"") wants the audience to be suspicious of Waters' motives, portraying him as a heartless military operative that has suddenly grown a conscience.
If nothing else, ""Tears of the Sun"" manages to do what ""Black Hawk Down"" failed to do: make us forget how thinly developed the secondary characters are. Both films had this problem, but ""Tears"" has such beautiful imagery and a strong internal conflict within Waters that his team becomes of less importance. Fuqua, adding this film to the acclaimed ""Training Day,"" has grown a lot since 1998's ""Replacement Killers."" ""Tears of the Sun,"" while not his best offering, is certainly worth taking in.
