A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

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Title: Tears of the Sun

Date Viewed: 3/18/02

Details:

Bruce Willis

Monica Bellucci

Director: Antoine Fuqua

Music: Howard Zimmer

Score: +

The Review: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." -- Edmund Burke (attrib.)

This quotation is one of the things that made Tears of the Sun work for me. As if to underline the film's theme, it appears as an epilog in the trailing credits. It accurately and powerfully sums up the situation and the characters, and adds a bit of punch to the movie after its climax. It's a shame that this quotation is probably bogus.

The geography is a bit unusual for standard movie fare: an uncivil insurrection has started in Nigeria, overthrown or assassinated many governmental and tribal leaders, and the coup is engaged in a brutal ethnic cleansing. The US battle group off-shore is evacuating American embassy and medical workers, and Willis' SEAL team is engaged in securing, protecting and ferrying staff back to the aircraft carrier. It is on his last excursion into the jungle to rescue an American doctor (Bellucci), a priest and two sisters, that the situation starts to get out of control, and Willis starts bending his mission parameters.

There is conflict at several levels here: the obvious conflict between the Nigerian rebels and most of the rest of the country's population, and the less obvious conflict of interest and orders that Willis goes through as he starts to come to Burke's conclusion. The interaction between Willis and Bellucci forms the core of the film's personality, as it grows and mutates through the trials of escape and pursuit towards the Cameroon border. Bellucci begins as willful, sullen and untrusting, and this is counteracted by a very stoic and stone-faced Willis just trying to follow his orders. But the dilemma of the SEAL team, and of Willis as its leader, reaches its peak sooner rather than later, and while the change in the rules of engagement might be predictable, it works.

The music in the last third of the film is particularly effective, dominated by what appear to be special compositions by Lena B and Zimmer, with driving rhythms and occasionally chilling choral intervention.

(29-Mar-03)

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