FilmBlather.com

"It's been so long since I've done a good thing... a right thing."

Tears of the Sun is awful beyond all reason. I didn't think it was possible for all the talent involved here to make a movie so bereft of commendable elements, but here we are. This pathetic attempt at a war movie -- described by some as Black Hawk Down meets Three Kings -- would be laughable if it wasn't so offensive. By offensive, I mean racist, patronizing and condescending, aside from the numerous affronts to cinema that otherwise talented director Antoine Fuqua commits. Actually, scratch that: most of the blame is shouldered by screenwriters Alex Lasko and Patrick Cirillo, who have turned in one of the worst produced scripts in memory. On paper, the movie doesn't sound like it could be a disaster, but trust me: this is horrendously bad stuff.

I heard a rumor that George W. Bush petitioned Hollywood to produce patriotic war films following September 11th. I can't vouch for the accuracy of said rumor, but Tears of the Sun certainly plays like it could be the product of such an undertaking. It's a message movie so vapid, so obvious, so aggressive, that the soundtrack might as well have consisted exclusively of John Philip Sousa marches. Instead, they use mostly African music -- and we know its African because the one that's played over the denoument is the word "Africa" chanted over and over.

Bruce Willis, recklessly abandoning an impressive streak of good movies (I count seven), plays Lt. A.K. Waters, a businesslike professional known for always completing his missions no matter what the course. He and his men are sent into Nigerian forests to rescue an American doctor (Monica Bellucci), a nun and a priest who run a mission that happens to be in the path of a group of soldiers serving under a ruthless dictator who just rose to power in the beleaguered country.

Surprise: the nun and priest refuse to leave, and Dr. Hendricks will not leave behind the people in her care. Dragging along some seventy natives isn't part of Waters' orders, but he takes them to appease Hendricks with the intention of abandoning them outside the helicopter. He can't do this, of course -- what kind of hero would that make? -- but how his change of heart comes about I will leave for you to discover should you make the grave mistake of paying money for this tripe.

The movie uses the entire African people as a plot device. They speak flawless English when the script calls for it, and wear pained expressions of incomprehension when we're supposed to sympathize. Nigerian natives aren't just portrayed as defenseless, they're stripped of all dignity; not once is an African character given a say in his or her own fate. Perhaps the most condescending moment comes when one of Lt. Walker's black soldiers (Eamonn Owens) defends Walker's decision to disobey orders with the line "Hey, my people were African too. You're doing the right thing."

This only adds to the film's already rampant nationalism. Its entire purpose is to insist that the US military is wonderful, to dissuade the American public that the Army is occasionally responsible for inhumanity and boneheadedness. My favorite part had to be an exchange that took place essentially like this:

Walker: "I'm going to blatantly disobey your orders and endanger America's diplomatic position."

Commanding Officer: "I don't like this. You get back here as soon as you can, you hear me?"

Technically, Tears of the Sun isn't any more competent. It moves along at a glacial pace, repeating situations until I screamed "No mas!" If I heard Willis tell someone to "get the people ready to move" one more time, I was ready to walk out. And the battle scenes are undermined by the utter anonymity of the soldiers; during the climax, I am convinced that we saw more men get hit and fall than were in Walker's platoon to begin with.

This is the worst kind of patriotism, espousing blind faith in the military and our president's foreign policy. The film shows an Army officer doing various good deeds, but doesn't show an iota of concern for anyone who is not American. Support our country; boycott this movie.