I only watched Tears of the Sun because Antoine Fuqua directed it, and I knew that it was not going to be that great. Fuqua either makes excellent movies such as The Equalizer, King Arthur, Training Day and The Replacement Killers or aggressively mediocre movies like Shooter, Olympus Has Fallen and Southpaw.
Tears of the Sun is a fictional movie set during a historical conflict, the Nigerian civil war. This fact alone would make Tears of the Sun slightly offensive, but I am an American who knows nothing about the actual conflict. Tears of the Sun is about US Navy SEALs rescuing ONE US Citizen, a hot humanitarian doctor with magnificent breasts played by Monica Bellucci. There are three other people they are supposed to rescue, but she is the priority. Do we do that? Other than her hotness, she is not strategically important. She insists that the SEALs, commanded by Bruce Willis, rescue her patients, and he goes against protocol and does.
Tears of the Sun is basically an American fantasy of how US forces act in foreign conflicts. We shoot the bad guys mid rape and rescue nameless African women and children except for Patience, who gets a dash of back story. We back the right foreign leaders albeit reluctantly because we hate to get involved in foreign conflicts. African American soldiers get to express their solidarity with their African brothers. Tears of the Sun is ridiculous.
Even without the wish fulfillment, Tears of the Sun is an empty action movie with little to zero character development. After watching Tears of the Sun, I was further appalled to discover that allegedly the inspiration came from a mission of the Canadian Joint Task Force Two in Columbia. WTH!?! I have tried to learn more about the real story, but hit a dead end. If there is an origin story, how did filmmakers start in Columbia and end up in Nigeria? HOW?
Side note: Nick Chunland and Cole Hauser rarely play good guys so I kept expecting them to betray Willis during Tears of the Sun, but they never did.
Unless you are a die hard Bruce Willis fan (pun intended), skip Tears of the Sun and watch Black Hawk Down instead.