Tear of The Sun

 Tear of The Sun

 

Directed by Antoine Fuqua

Written by Alex Lasker ,Patrick Cirillo

Produced by Ian Bryce ,Mike Lobell ,Arnold Rifkin

Starring Bruce Willis ,Monica Bellucci ,Cole Hauser ,Tom Skerritt ,Cinematography ,Mauro Fiore

Edited by Conrad Buff

Music by Hans Zimmer

Production companies Columbia Pictures ,Revolution Studios ,CheyenneEnterprises

Distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing

Release date March 7, 2003

Running time 121 minutes

Country United States

Language English

Budget $100.5 million

Box office $86.5 million

STORY LINE

Turmoil erupts in Nigeria following a military coup d'etat led by exiled General Mustafa Yakubu in which President Samuel Azuka and his entire family are reportedly assassinated. The ethnic enmity is between the Fulani Moslems in the north and Christian Ibo in the south. Foreigners evacuate the country and Lieutenant A.K. Waters (Bruce Willis) and his U.S. Navy SEAL team consisting of Zee (Eamonn Walker), Slo (Nick Chinlund), Red (Cole Hauser), Lake (Johnny Messner), Silk (Charles Ingram), Doc (Paul Francis), and Flea (Chad Smith), board the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman, to be dispatched by Captain Bill Rhodes (Tom Skerritt) to extract Dr. Lena Fiore Kendricks (Monica Bellucci), a U.S. citizen by marriage to the late Dr. John Kendricks who was killed by rebels in Sierra Leone. Their secondary mission is to extract the mission's priest (Pierrino Mascarino) and two nuns (Fionnula Flanagan and Cornelia Hayes O'Herlihy), should they choose to come.

Waters gets to Kendricks, telling her that rebels are closing in on her hospital and the mission, and that his orders are to extract U.S. citizens; however, Kendricks refuses to leave without her patients that she loves so much. Waters calls Rhodes for options; after a brief conversation, he concedes to Kendricks' wishes and agrees to take those refugees able to walk. Kendricks begins assembling the able-bodied for the 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) hike; the priest and the nuns stay behind to take care of the injured.

 Irritated and behind schedule, the team and the refugees leave the hospital mission after daybreak. At nightfall they take a short break. The rebels rapidly approach their position, and Waters stealthily kills one. Kendricks warns Waters that the rebels are going to the mission, but he is determined to carry out his orders, and they continue to the extraction point.

 Back at the mission, the staff and refugees are detained by the rebels. Despite the priest's pleas for mercy, the rebels murder him and the remaining occupants.

 When the team arrives at the extraction point, Waters' initial plan becomes clear: the SEALs suddenly turn away the refugees from the waiting SH-60B Seahawk helicopter. Waters forces Kendricks into the helicopter against her will, leaving the refugees stranded in the jungle, defenseless against the rebels. En route back to Harry Truman, they fly over the original mission compound, seeing it destroyed and all its occupants murdered, as Kendricks had feared.

 Remorseful, Waters orders the pilot to return to the refugees. He then loads as many refugees as he can into the helicopter and decides to escort the remaining refugees to the Cameroonian border on foot.

 During the hike to Cameroon, the SEALs discover the rebels are somehow tracking them. As they escape and evade the rebels, the team enters a village whose inhabitants are being raped, tortured, and massacred by the rebels. Cognizant of his ability to stop it, Waters orders the team to kill the rebels. The team is visibly shaken by the atrocities they see the rebels have committed against the villagers.

 Again en route, Slo determines that a refugee is transmitting a signal allowing the rebels to locate them. A newer refugee (Jimmy Jean-Louis) picked up during the trek attempts to run but is shot. A transmitter is discovered on his body. As he bleeds out, he confesses that he is coerced to be the rat because his family had been captured by the rebels. The following search for his co-conspirators reveals the presence of Arthur Azuka (Sammi Rotibi), the surviving son of late President Samuel Azuka, which they realize is the reason the rebels are hunting them: Samuel Azuka was not only the president of the country, but also the tribal king of the Ibo. As the only surviving member of this royal bloodline, Arthur is the only person left with a legitimate claim to the Ibo Nation. Waters is angered that Kendricks knew this but did not inform him.

The SEALs decide to continue escorting the refugees to Cameroon, regardless of the cost. A firefight ensues when the rebels finally catch up with them, and the SEALs decide to stay behind as rearguard to buy the refugees enough time to reach the border safely.

 Zee radios the Navy for air support; two F/A-18s take off and head towards them. The rebels kill Slo, Lake, Flea, and Silk. Waters, Red, Doc, and Zee are wounded, but direct the jets on where to attack. Arthur and Kendricks rush towards the now-closed Cameroonian border crossing when they hear the jets approach and bomb the pursuing rebels.

 Waters, Zee, Doc, and Red rise from the grass as Navy helicopters land in Cameroon, opposite the Nigerian border crossing. Rhodes arrives and orders the gate open, letting in the SEALs and the refugees. They are then escorted onto the helicopters.

 Rhodes promises Waters that he will recover the bodies of Waters' men. Kendricks bids tearful farewells to her Nigerian friends and flies away in a helicopter while comforting Waters, watching as Arthur is surrounded by his people proclaiming their freedom.

 The movie ends with, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" quote attributed to Edmund Burke.

REVIEW

'Tears of the Sun' is a movie with a message and an interesting first hour, but contains too many Hollywood clichés to really be something. We start with Lieutenant Waters (Bruce Willis) and his team of SEALS who have to rescue Dr. Lena Kendricks (Monica Bellucci), a priest and two nuns from a missionary post in Nigeria where murdering rebels are about to arrive. The priest and the nuns want to stay, Kendricks only wants to come if the Nigerian refugees can come too. Waters agrees only to leave them behind as soon as Kendricks is on the helicopter. Then, from the helicopter, he witnesses the result of rebels passing by and in an instant he disobeys his orders and turns the helicopter around.

 This is the point where the best part of the movie begins. Waters and his team are on their own now, leading the refugees to the border of Cameroon. The way his team not always agrees with his decisions but how they are loyal anyway is one of the interesting things here. Another is the way the movie dares to show the rebels and their actions, things we see parts of on the news in places like Liberia and Sudan. It gives us an impression how hopeless the situation is in some parts of Africa. The distraction here comes from Kendricks who is an obvious Hollywood plot device. She is the possible love interest, or at least the needed female character, and she must annoy Waters by constantly suggesting things that even to her must sound stupid when followed by a lot of rebels. Never mind.

 Then the third act starts and the movie fails to deliver what it kind of promised before. Instead of following the dramatic path it changes into the kind of action film Hollywood likes to produce. A lot of gunfire, explosions and bodies flying through the air. That's too bad since an earlier action sequence was able to show both the horrific actions of the rebels and the trained and nuanced way of SEALS dealing with a situation. During that sequence I felt a director (Antoine Fuqua) doing his job the right way, making the movie very intense. He did the same thing for the excellent 'Training Day' from the year before. His third act of 'Tears of the Sun' was sort of like an introduction to his real Hollywood adventure, 'King Arthur'.

Source : https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0314353/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tears_of_the_Sun