Tears of the Sun (2003)

Director: Anton Fuqua

Writers: Alex Lasker, Patrick Cirillo

Composers: Lisa Gerrard, Hans Zimmer

Starring: Bruce Willis, Monica Bellucci, Cole Hauser, Eamonn Walker, Johnny Messner, Nick Chinlund, Charles Ingram, Paul Francis, Chad Smith, Tom Skerritt, Malick Bowens, Awaovieyi Agie, Akosua Busia

More info: IMDb

Tagline: The only thing necessary for evil the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Plot: A Special-Ops commander leads his team into the Nigerian jungle in order to rescue a doctor who will only join them if they agree to save 70 refugees too.

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again? No.

I must say this is better than I thought it'd be.  Willis tones it down a bit from his usual heroics which was nice.  The action scenes are well staged and the jungle locations are nice but even not knowing it was filmed in Hawaii it was obvious they weren't really in Africa...I mean REALLY obvious.  There's nothing all that unusual about this picture in its story or anything else which is fine.  Pictures don't necessarily have to do anything besides entertain and this one did but not enough to warrant a repeat viewing.  One thing that bothered me a bit was the overly sentimental score that's somber from start to finish.  It works some of the time but after an hour you kind of wish Zimmer & Gerrard would have mixed it up a bit.  It's not a fail but it is odd and it relaxes the film more than you'd expect...or perhaps want. The Columbia DVD has a few extras including the director's commentary, writers' commentary and an Africa fact track (pop up text with little triva tidbits about the film) as well as a 15 minute making of featurette, 8 very brief interviews with those who live in Africa and their struggles, an interactive map of Africa and a trailer for this film along with trailers for 8 others.