“Military Mondays” is a new weekly series where we review new, old, classic, or underrated films involving war and the military. In future, posts in this series the film reviewed will be chosen by you, our audience, and we’re looking forward to getting your input on which movies we will be watching for this series.

For our inaugural post, however, I have chosen Tears of The Sun. This film has a special significance for the ForReel team as it was the first film Thomas and I saw together as teenagers on base at NAS Whidbey.

Tears of the Sun was released in 2003 and starred an aging Bruce Willis alongside up and comers Monica Belluci, Cole Hauser, and Johnny Messner. It was directed by Antoine Fuqua, who at that point was fresh off of big success with his film Training Day.

The story in Tears of the Sun is a mash up of cliche character arcs combined with a real world connection to the evils of tribal warfare in Africa largely ignored by the rest of the world. Willis and company simply were unable to overcome many of these cliches and it’s certainly nowhere near the superstar’s best performance.

On the plus side, Fuqua pushed to have real Africans flown in as extras; a calculation that pays off dramatically as we watch their reactions to a village burning and gunfire filling the air. These scenes are absolutely gut wrenching. Arguably, my favorite part of this film is the musical score. “The Jablonsky Variations On A Theme” with Hans Zimmer remains one of my favorite musical numbers in cinema to this day.

Overall though, Tears of the Sun is much less than what it could’ve been and far from perfect. Still, it’s an enjoyable experience that may just get people to pay more attention to what happens in Africa and because of that, it survives.

Acting and Casting - 1 | Visual Effects and Editing - 1 | Story and Message - 1 | Entertainment Value - 2 | Music Score and Soundtrack - 2 | Reviewer's Preference - 1 | What does this mean?