Film

What's on at the cinema plus reviews of the latest movie and DVD releases

Updates:

Tears of the Sun (2003)

Director: Antoine Fuqua

Average user rating

1 review

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Of all the barbarities in all the world - not least in Africa - Hollywood had to wade into a fabricated civil war in Nigeria. At least this po-faced military-adventuring tub-thumper doesn't sneer the way Wag the Dog did at the idea of Albanian unrest. Then again, that might have relieved the suffocating banality of its African abstract, which encompasses local victims and villains and US flashfire fighters bound by the rulebook. 'God already left Africa' is, then, Willis's navy grunt's sum wisdom on the matter. Our hero and his platoon are charged with airlifting a Médecins Sans Frontières doctor (Bellucci) to safety. However, bundling the little lady into a 'copter and away turns out to be not so wham-bam. There's a moment pregnant with bathos as the chopper rises over the killing fields: Willis's cheeks clench, a taut grimace slowly spreads across his face, before he finally pronounces, 'Let's turn her around.' (Tit for tat: Bellucci's shirt slips a button.) From here on it's pretty much 'Die Hard in the Jungle', with carefully demarcated standards for representing American and 'Nigerian' violence. But, er, psychology? Culture? History? Willis: 'When I figure it out, I'll let you know.'

Author: NB 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

Bookmark

User reviews of this film

Nkoyo said...

Posted on Aug 06 2009 16:26 I was in Kaduna, (northern Nigeria) when I saw this and i am from the south. So technically I was in enemy territory as far as this movie is concerned. Do you know that some footage was taken from a documentary filmed by Sorious Samura entitled 'Cry Freetown, I am not sure any part was even filmed in Nigeria. I was wondering what on earth was actually going on in the movie. Athough the timeline was supposed to be in the year of its release, most Nigerians who saw it thought it was a re-enactment of the civil war (Nigeria vs Biafra).
My candid comment/question is this What was the point of it all? And i can't believe my beloved Bruce Willis would actually be in this sort of production.
I don't want to leave it unrated so the one star i give is actually a negative one.

Report as inappropriate