Then again, having sat through it, the least I can do to make myself feel better is use this space to denounce it. Perhaps I’m a little ratty because I had, just before seeing it, been subjected to Anger Management. And just as I was recovering from Tears of the Sun I was assaulted by The Hunted. But we’ll come to that in the next few weeks.Tears of the Sun is set in Africa —Nigeria, to be precise. One can be precise because the movie is prefaced by fake TV footage telling us that there’s a civil war on in Nigeria: “this once-peaceful country” (I’m choking) is at war; “the majority of Ibo have abandoned their homes”, and so on. Foreign nationals are being evacuated. That’s precise enough, though which Nigerian civil war is being referred to is unclear — not the Biafran one, I don’t think, because the military hardware we see a bit later seems too contemporary. Perhaps it’s a new one that’s just broken out in darkest Africa, which, as we know, is a constant rumble of civil wars, high-, low- or medium-level. The fact that Africa really is so troubled is, of course, annoying to anyone trying not to be an “Afro-pessimist”, but what’s going on in Tears of the Sun does not engage with reality in any meaningful way. Africa is a fictional space for most Americans, so anything they like can be projected on to it. The fake TV footage having set the scene, there is a surge of important music and we’re “somewhere off the coast of Africa”, or so a subtitle informs us. We’re on a United States army aircraft carrier, and Lieutenant Bruce Willis and his men have just got back from rescuing some US citizens from the rampant natives. They are looking forward to their bunks and their chow. But barely have they got out of their ‘copter than tough commander Tom Skerrit, who has had a lot of practice playing tough commanders, is telling them they have to go back almost at once to rescue a woman doctor working in a remote mission hospital. Would it have been so urgent had the doctor been male? One suspects not. At any rate, the doctor is indeed female, and beautiful too, because she is played by Monica Bellucci. Monica is Italian, naturally, but (as the commander explains for the sake of viewers wondering why she was cast) Monica is an American citizen and thus must be rescued at once. We’re also told that her husband is dead, so we (and Bruce) know she’s single. It’s called dramatic tension. Bruce at this stage has not required the use of his facial muscles, but soon he will. Monica doesn’t want to be rescued unless the people she has been helping can come too. Bruce is willing to try to trick her into leaving. He agrees to take Monica and her Africans. The “rebels” are approaching. Cue wantonly manipulative and very tearful farewell from the European missionaries at the hospital. They will stay to be massacred. In the meantime, Bruce will schlepp Monica and her Africans through the jungle to the rendezvous point, and then he’ll kidnap Monica and abandon the Africans. So far so good.Except that as they fly away, and Monica gets all tearful, Bruce has a spasm of facial movement and decides they’ve got to go back. They must get as many Africans as possible on to the helicopter, then Bruce and his faithful band of men will take Monica and the rest of them through the jungle and across the border to Cameroon. He is, of course, disobeying orders. The audience is deeply impressed. The façade of Bruce’s brute bald stubbled manliness has been ripped away to reveal the sensitive human being beneath. In the meantime, the rebels have arrived at the mission station and massacred everyone. The rebels are led by two evil-looking commanders, one who barks orders in a savage way and one who just smirks evilly from behind his dark glasses.
Bruce, Monica, et al tramp through the jungle, chased by the rebels. A variety of predictable set-pieces and hoary old clichés come to pass, including the moment of soldierly camaraderie and male bonding in which Bruce asks his men if they’re with him or against him. Then there’s a particularly nauseating scene when they come across a village being ravaged by the rebels, with some grotesque brutality thrown in. This is all very upsetting until you realise it’s not there to do anything except justify the summary justice promptly meted out by Bruce and his men, and to provide the filmmakers with a bit of shoot-’em-up action. And so we trudge on toward the Cameroonian border. There’s lots of gooey music, and the moments of tension and fear are relieved by passages of sentimentality. For instance, there’s an attractively head-scarved African woman who keeps trembling on the verge of tears, asking the black American soldier (there had to be one) to assure her everything will be alright. She keeps trembling on the brink of tears until Bruce has effected the final rescue, when she finally spills over and commends him, in religiose broken English, for his wonderful work on behalf of the continent. This is the point at which the viewer is torn between the urge to laugh and the desire to vomit. If only everyone in the Third World were as weepily grateful for everything the US has done for them.
What is worse than sentimentality, that great besetting sin of popular art? I’ll tell you: American military macho sentimentality is worse. The solemnity with which Bruce conducts himself through all this balderdash signals Serious Movie, not just popular entertainment. But he’s lying — Tears of the Sun is popular entertainment of the most expensive, indulgent and idiot-brained kind. The clichés of darkest Africa are recycled, not to make us think about some of the terrible things that happen in Africa (that is Nepad’s job, isn’t it?), but to provide a setting in which Bruce Willis can perform selfless heroic feats on behalf of the benighted natives. Either Tears of the Sun is appallingly naive or it is disgustingly cynical. It’s hard not to go with the latter: this saga of the US saving Africa from itself can only be seen in the context of the US saving Iraq from itself, although that adventure seems to have been marginally less successful in the long run than Bruce Willis’s efforts in Nigeria. He should be sent to Iraq immediately.