Another review of a movie that is about the tragedies that occur in Africa. Another movie that I can say deals with ugly subject matter, yet has a certain beauty to it - although I am not entirely certain that it is very realistic, with a handful of American specialists managing to evade, and then fight off, an army of 300 plus native soldiers.
This one is a fictional account of a revolution that quite suddenly erupts in Nigeria, and an American military unit's attempt to safeguard an American out of the country. There is a fictional rebel army that is guilty of many of those worst excesses that many of us on the outside have come to associate with violence in Africa: rape and mutilation of women (particularly cutting off their breasts, so that they can no longer breast feed any children in the future, recruiting and utilizing children to become child soldiers, indiscriminate killings and even mass murders of whole villages, and overall ruling through terror).
Bruce Willis is the most recognizable star in this movie, as he plays Special-Ops commander Lieutenant Waters, who has to lead his team into the war torn nation, into a mission just hours before a massacre is expected by the approaching rebel army, in order to save a doctor serving there, Dr. Kendricks, played by Monica Bellucci.
***Spoiler Alert***
The team reached the village smoothly, and have every intention of taking the doctor to safety. But it becomes more complicated when she absolutely refuses to leave and save herself, and insists that the team help those injured who can still travel to be taken to safety. Lt. Waters is opposed to it, at least initially, but when he realizes that her staunch position is putting his mission in jeopardy, he relents, and begins to make preparations to evacuate the dozens of people, and save them from certain slaughter from the approaching rebel forces.
Waters and his team manage to get the team to relative safety, after evading a very close call with the rebels in the middle of the night. They manage to get to a clearing the next day, but when the helicopters come, it is only Dr. Kendricks that is put in one, much to her shock and dismay. The injured band of natives feel rejected and abandoned, left to their own devices. When the helicopters lift off and head back towards safety on an aircraft carrier, they happen to pass by the mission, and Dr. Kendricks and the entire military special ops team get to see firsthand the massacre that has just taken place there.
Of his own accord, Lt. Waters decides to turn around and take as many of the native refugees as possible. His team stays behind, while a dozen natives are lifted off to safety by the Cameroon border. It does not take long for Lt. Waters and his team to find out that conditions in Nigeria have changed, and the American military will not be flying anything over Nigerian airspace anymore. The team is on their own, left to their own devices to try to make it to the presumable safety of the Cameroon border.
So, with the change of plans, the team has to make do. They are on foot, in the jungles of Africa, needing to make it to the border. That will be hard enough. But they soon discover that they are being followed by the pursuing rebel army. This comes as a bit of surprising news to them, and they find out that one among the refugees has been transmitting to the rebels, allowing them to know the whereabouts of the Americans and those they are protecting. To add even more complications to the mix, they also find out that among those that they are trying to get to the safety of the border is none other than the son of the recently slain President. it had been reported that the entire family of the president had been killed. But this young man has survived, and now serves as the symbolic hope for the nation. It is this man that the rebels truly are after.
Waters has to lead his team and the band of refugees towards greater safety, and still has to head for the border, but now, the team knows that they will also have to fight against a force far greater in number than they, and with the advantage of being at home and knowing the layout of the land far better. What remains on the American team is superior technology, as well as an indomitable will.
Along their trek, they run into a village that will prove symbolic of the tragedies that seem to regularly occur in Africa in recent decades. An army unit has come to essentially have their way, raping and mutilating the women, killing any men that are deemed to stand in the way, and possibly recruiting any willing and able-bodied men and/or children to their cause. The American team stumbles into this, and decide to intervene. Though numerically not superior, they engage carefully, and manage to put an end to the carnage. It slows them down, of course, but they have done a deed that they can feel good about.
They continue the attempted escape, but the enemy is closing in fast, and the American team has to prepare to engage. It is an enormous fight, and simply by sheer numbers of the native force, the American team at times seems overwhelmed, and they hang on desperately, just trying to stall for time, to give themselves a chance, not to mention the refugees and the good doctor.
Eventually, they do actually make it to the border, but even here, there are further complications when the Cameroon soldiers refuse to open the gates to let the refugees in.
The team has to call in the American forces to have them fly in for air support. They get their just as the rebel forces are closing in and about to massacre the American team (of which, already, a few have fallen) and the refugees - including the President's son (who is also a tribal leader). The air support manages to end the carnage and sure massacre to follow, but just in the nick of time.
The soldiers finally get the permission to open the gate and allow the refugees into their side of the border. The doctor thanks the team, and the movie essentially ends there.
"Tears of the Sun" is a very good movie that opens the eyes of Western audiences to some of what is happening on the African continent, much like "Blood Diamond". While it does not go into the specifics as much that movie, this has a different focus. Again, not the most realistic of movies (in real life, the team and the band of refugees surely would have been massacred, being so greatly outnumbered and with so many obstacles standing in their way), and this movie skirts around some of he less savory aspects of Special Ops (to say nothing of covert American intervention in foreign lands) but it is a movie, and has the obligatory happy ending. It gives the audience a glimpse of some of the tragedy still taking place on the African continent, and does so in an entertaining manner. Recommended!
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