"Now, just aim for the shiny pallid white thing in all the green." Tears of the Sun Rated R 118 minutes

Thursday, March 06, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Full Metal Critic: Willis in good action hero form with Tears of the Sun

For anyone who wondered why the United States intervened with troops in Bosnia but not in Rwanda, for anyone who laments the delayed American entry into World War II that cost millions of lives in Europe, and for anyone who cheered when President Bartlet declared on "The West Wing" that he would act to stop violations of human rights anywhere in the world, the new Bruce Willis film Tears of the Sun is for you.

But don't think this film is full of weighty philosophical discussions and intellectual debates over the merits of intervention; that's mostly taken care of in some unnecessary, maudlin scenes at the end. Most of this movie is pure war picture, and those critics who say this is Willis' best film since the Die Hard series aren't far off.

Willis is Lt. A.K. Waters, a Navy SEAL team commander assigned to make a high-altitude, low-opening parachute jump into Nigeria to rescue an American doctor (the widow of another famous physician), a priest and two nuns from a primitive field hospital. It seems Muslims from the northern part of the country have gone on a killing spree against Christians in the south, and they're headed right for the good doctor's location.

The orders, delivered by a SEAL captain, played by a grizzled Tom Skerritt, are simple: Rescue only the doctor, Lena Hendricks (Monica Belluci, soon to be seen in Matrix Reloaded) and the clergy and get out. But Hendricks refuses to leave without the refugees, so Willis has to make a command decision: Lie, and tell her that if she comes, everyone can go.

A 12-kilometer hike later, and it's just Hendricks and the SEAL team boarding the helicopter back to the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman. She's incensed, and she tells him the refugees will be killed. After they fly over the remains of the hospital, where everyone has been slain, Waters changes his mind, and decides to turn around and rescue everyone by walking them across the border to neighboring Cameroon.

On the way, they come across a village where rebel troops are in the middle of a brutal ethnic cleansing. The SEAL team smokes the rebels, and at the end of the day Hendricks tells a suddenly vulnerable Waters that he's done a good thing. "It's been so long since I've done a good thing, the right thing," he replies. But then he's back to business.

Pursued by committed rebel troops, and slowed by the presence of so many refugees, the SEAL team pushes hard for the border. (A helicopter exfiltration is impossible, thanks to Nigerian air defenses.) They know they are going to have to confront the other side, and Willis apologizes to his team for the decision to put them in harm's way against orders. "I broke my own rule. I started to give a fuck," he says. (Meanwhile, the Full Metal Critic is wondering how the SEAL team can fight all these battles, since SEALs generally are lightly equipped because of their particular methods of operation.)

The final battle, to say the least, is impressive, thanks in no small part to the pyrotechnics afforded by the U.S. taxpayer via the F/A-18 Hornets launched from the Truman. A valedictory quote (from Edmund Burke) reminds us that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing, as if we'd missed that message from the preceding two hours. But this is a Bruce Willis movie, and a good one, so a little overkill at the end is a small vice.