It is hard to
talk about the new Bruce Willis action/war film Tears of the
Sun without putting it in context with current events. It is
no secret the United States is on the verge of war with Iraq.
Right or wrong – and while I have an opinion this isn’t the
forum for it – the US and Britain are more than likely going to
go into the desert and attempt to build a new foundation in the
combustible Middle Eastern country. No matter how you look at
it, this will be nation building, and the lives of American
soldiers will be on the line.
Tears of the
Sun cannot help but touch on this current war anxiety. Set
in Nigeria (but not based on a true story or incident), a
team of Navy SEALS led by Lieutenant A.K. Waters (Willis) is
dropped into the African nation after the Muslim-lead military
overthrows the democratically elected president in a bloody
coup. With orders to retrieve American, by marriage, Dr. Lena
Kendricks (Monica Bellucci, who can also be seen in this month’s
devastatingly provocative Irreversible) Waters and his
team find her unwilling to leave the country unless the refugees
in her jungle mission can be led to safety across the border.
At first,
Waters only cares about his mission to retrieve the female
doctor. Saying he’ll do as she asks, the soldier marches his
fellow SEALS and the refugees to a designated helicopter landing
site intent on only taking Lena to the air craft carrier waiting
out in the Ocean, leaving the 70 or so Africans behind. All goes
according to plan until the SEAL company flies back over the
mission on their way out to see. There, they see the mangled
remnants of those that they left behind bloodied and dismembered
throughout the burning Catholic mission and village.
Having a change
of heart, Waters and his team turn back with Lena in tow,
realizing that the Africans they left behind will be at the
mercy of the marauding rebel army. Breaking their orders and
choosing to follow a new mission, the team heads into the heart
of the Nigerian jungle intent on leading the refugees and Dr.
Kendricks to safety.
In many ways,
Tears of the Sun is an excellently constructed motion
picture. Director Antoine Fuqua continues to grow as a director.
With this film, it is hard to believe that the Training
Day director is the same man who also made the lukewarm
The Replacement Killers and the derivatively idiotic Bait.
Tears starts off exceedingly well. Willis and his team of
soldiers are presented with an iron gaze that gradually softens
as their mission parameters slowly change. At first, the SEALS
are all business, intent on only following their orders in the
strictest sense. But as the Nigerian situation becomes clearer
to them, this war-worn façade slowly fades and the realization
of their duty as human beings becomes more and more evident.
If only Fuqua
and screenwriters Alex Lasker (Firefox) and Patrick
Cirillo (Homer and Eddie) trusted themselves a bit more.
It is obvious from the first scenes in the opulent jungle
(Hawaii majestically stands in for Nigeria here) that they’ve
all done their requisite Oliver Stone and Francis Ford Coppola
homework. But unlike their films where the full weight of war
never lets up, where I could feel the dirt and blood of a
soldier’s tears eat me apart, Fuqua and company let Tears of
the Sun devolve into a giant Rambo-esque video game.
What should be emotionally crippling instead becomes viscerally
exciting, as if the director and writers were worried audiences
couldn’t handle any more hard-edged moralizing and needed the
cleansing effect of sensationalistic violence to wash themselves
of their growing guilt.
It doesn’t help
that the Nigerian rebels are presented in a one-dimensional
murderously vindictive fashion. For all the complaints
Black Hawk Down – a film I loved – took for being
irresponsible in its depiction of the African enemy facing down
trapped US soldiers, Tears of the Sun is the film that
really should shoulder such accusations. For those in America
that fear the monstrous "Muslim horde" since the events of 9/11,
this film will surely not dissuade that apprehension. More
brutally evil than Hitler’s SS, the Nigerian rebels are about as
one-sided a depiction of enemy soldiers you’re apt to find this
side of a John Wayne war movie. It’s unsettling, and in the
light of current events, almost unacceptable.
Only nearly,
though, for when Tears of the Sun focuses squarely on the
conflicting and changing emotions of the SEAL soldiers it all
but achieves an eerie transcendence that’s far better than the
source material it is coming from. Willis in particular proves
once again what an underrated actor he is. I like the fact that
when asked why he is changing the objective of his mission and
choosing to lead the refugees out of Nigeria he doesn’t have an
answer. The fact that something has snapped – maybe even awoken
– in this hard, war weary man, something even he can’t quite
fathom, is sublimely human and Willis embodies all of this
magnificently.
Of the SEAL
soldiers, each is allowed a moment or two to resonate in the
film and leave an indelible impression, but it is Eamonn Walker,
playing radio man and Water’s confidant Ellis "Zee" Pettigrew,
that cuts the most striking visage. A veteran of HBO's Oz
and featured as the title character in BBC’s modern-day
retelling of Shakespeare’s Othello, Walker demands
attention every moment he is on screen. For him, this slaughter
in Africa becomes all consuming and the fate of the refugees
worth every last ounce of his own blood. Surely, this is the
type of supporting performance young actors dream of giving, and
I for one could not help but sit up and take notice.
In the end,
though, things just become all-too easy. Yes, people die (and
no, I’m not saying who) and there are consequences to war, but
Tears of the Sun is set in the idea of American supremacy
when it comes to warfare. The movie devolves into the type of
shoot-out where round after round of enemy gunfire seemingly
misses their targets, while almost every shot fired from a US
machine gun can’t help but hit a bull's eye. With the thought of
a real war looming every day, the idea that combat can – while
still painful – be so easy is more than a bit unpalatable.
I guess,
what I am saying, is that I’m not looking for answers or realism
in a movie like Tears of the Sun – it is still a film
trying to entertain after all – I just want it to take a stand
and not fall so squarely into jingoistic grandstanding. Willis
and Walker definitely deserve more than that, and as the end
credits finished their crawl, I knew that I did, too.
