The political tone of any given war movie can often be predicted from a quick analysis of its hardware. The genuine military-issue aircraft in “”Top Gun”” or “”Black Hawk Down”” serve as credible indicators of a film whose underlying message is in keeping with the honchos in the Department of Defense.
Antoine Fuqua’s Tears of the Sun opens with a newscast aired from a Navy aircraft carrier and ends with a jet-fighter assault on Nigerian troops. Bookended by these two scenes is a film that follows its military-subsidized intentions straight into flawed mediocrity.Fuqua enters the African jungle hot off the heels of his gripping patrol through the treacherous outback of Los Angeles in Training Day. The hopes he raised with that near-masterpiece are dashed in Tears. The jungle is real now, but this film lacks the inexorable charisma of Denzel Washington’s alpha-male at its center. Tears also proves itself to be a much more conventional film in two respects: not only is it impossible to root for the bad guys, it’s impossible not to know how the movie is going to turn out in the end.One of the more telling exchanges in the film is a possibly inadvertent script error. When shown the rapid pace at which the rebels are closing the gap between themselves and the refugees, one of the S.E.A.L.S. remarks, “”These are the guys who win the Olympics.”” Of course, it is in fact the Kenyans who are renowned as Olympic long-distance runners, not the Nigerians, but it’s all the same to America. The message, though unintentional, is clear: we may deign to sully our hands in the foreign affairs of certain countries when it suits us, but don’t expect our grasp of those same foreign affairs to surpass that of, say, our President. Whether you agree with the movie’s political message or not, one thing is clear: this film would make Graham Greene vomit.They say at fifty we all have the face we deserve. While he has a few years to go, Bruce Willis is clearly working on a face whose furrows will afford him the layers of character he has sought in the course of his varied career. It is an interesting face, one well suited for the dour roles he seems to have an affinity for. Here, Willis plays Navy S.E.A.L.S. Lieutenant A.K. Waters. Tom Skerritt, in a role that essentially reprises his role from Top Gun fifteen years ago, is Willis’ superior officer. Most of the character drama in the film stems indirectly from his orders to Willis: save only the Americans–do not interfere with local politics. As the local politics involve genocide, Willis is ultimately unable to follow these orders. An attempt is ultimately made by the Lieutenant and his crew of S.E.A.L.S. to lead a group of wounded Nigerians out of occupied guerilla territory before a band of murder-bent rebels can track them down. They are hampered by the terrain, by their rounded charges, and by the fact that the doctor they were sent to rescue is a Feisty Italian Babe. As played by Monica Bellucci, Dr. Lena Hendricks is a mixed bag of cliches. An American citizen by marriage, Dr. Hendricks swears at Willis in Italian, tosses her hair in defiance of even the simplest request and runs through the jungle with the apparent intent of defending everyone with her cleavage. Bellucci, so good in the recent Irreversible, is horribly miscast in a lazily-written part that gives her little to work with. She brings glamour with her to the role, but it is an unnecessary glamour. She is an unrequested Fay Ray, and her lipstick is still perfect even after days of forced march in the jungle. As scripted, her character is that least likable of plot devices: the stubborn damsel in distress. At one point, well after Willis had turned around to save the wounded Nigerians, he asks her why she failed to share a critical piece of information with him. “”I didn’t trust you!”” she blurts out, nostrils flared in Feisty Italian defiance. Perhaps she was waiting for him to strip off his camos and show her his stigmata