dir. Antoine Fuqua
Opens Fri March 7 at various theaters.
Anyone with a subscription to the New Yorker or the Atlantic Monthly will quickly pinpoint the inspiration behind Tears of the Sun. For those unfamiliar: In 1994, Rwanda was in the throes of genocide, as the Hutu majority slaughtered 800,000 members of the Tutsi minority--a great many of them by machete--in just 100 days. Asleep at the wheel was the Clinton administration, which (along with the UN) did nothing to stop the genocide--indeed, the U.S. didn't even call it "genocide" until well into the 100 days of bloodshed. Obviously, it wasn't exactly America's finest hour.
Directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day), Tears of the Sun takes this basic situation and transfers it from Rwanda to Nigeria. The film's premise: The Nigerian president and his family have been assassinated in a military upheaval, and armed militias are marching through the country slaughtering civilians. In an attempt to rescue an American interest in the country--specifically, an American doctor (Monica Bellucci) working as a missionary--a group of Navy SEALs, led by Lieutenant Waters (Bruce Willis), is sent in for an evacuation. Upon the group's arrival, however, the good doctor refuses to leave the quickly crumbling nation without her Nigerian friends and helpers, forcing Waters to make a decision: essentially kidnap the doctor and fly her to safety, or break orders and risk the lives of his men escorting the Nigerians to the border.
If Tears of the Sun took place in 1994 in Rwanda, the film's running time would clock in somewhere around 35 minutes; Waters would simply have forced the "package" into a helicopter and left the associates to the machetes. But the film doesn't take place in Rwanda--instead, it's set in a Hollywood foreign-policy pipe dream. Choosing to brazenly flout orders and risk his and his men's lives, Waters chooses to do what's right. Our indefensible policy of only interceding in atrocity when American interests are at stake is abandoned, and the American military does right by humanity for a change--a plot decision that may make for smooth consumption by the American public, but which, as mentioned before, is merely a pipe dream. Simply put, the 35-minute version of Tears of the Sun would have made for a much more honest film.
Still, it could be argued that such a critique of Tears of the Sun is itself somewhat dishonest. After all, it is a fiction--an action film (or so it's being ineptly sold), with a certified action star--and as such should not be expected to achieve any more than that. Fine. But here's the thing: By so blatantly using a true-life atrocity as its premise, the film's eventual message--that America will always see to do right by the rest of the world--rings spectacularly false, especially given the actions both of the Clinton administration and, perhaps to a greater extent, the current White House residents. Just see Sudan and Iraq (among many others).
It should be pointed out here that Lieutenant Waters and his SEAL team are not without internal conflict when they decide to step in and risk an international incident. They are, after all, under strict orders to rescue the doctor and the doctor only. But again, once the choice is made, and the group makes the long, hazardous trek to the border, there is no talk from their superior of courts-martial or disciplinary actions against Waters and his men. Nada, zilch. Instead, they are given support--the fiery might of the American military--and it is here that Tears of the Sun reaches its zenith of dishonesty. The film's underlying statement--given either as a hopeful wish for what our army could be or, more nefariously, as a form of propaganda (and it's here that Bruce Willis' vocal right-wing leanings and support of his good friend Dubya should make an informative appearance)--is one of American goodwill toward foreign nations. We are not a bully, the film attempts to reassure us. No, really, we're not.
It is indeed possible that I'm overthinking this. It is, after all, just an action movie, and perhaps what happened with Tears of the Sun was a creative attempt to punch up a standard guns-and-ammo script with a little poly-sci-degree magic. For that, at least, they shouldn't really be faulted--especially with Cradle 2 the Grave currently visiting the multiplexes. But walking out of Tears of the Sun, I was reminded of another war film--an action/comedy--that managed to comment succinctly on U.S. foreign policy and still be entertaining. It was far better made, and its title was Three Kings.
