Tears of the Sun: Critic Reviews

Antoine Fuqua, coming off Training Day, knows how to stage a skirmish in the foliage so that each leaf glistens with waxy moonlit peril.

The audience's tears are more likely to result from boredom, irritation at Hans Zimmer's wretched fake-world-music score and inadvertent amusement at the thunderously earnest dialogue and Ms. Bellucci's awkward line readings.

The movie might have gotten a dramatic boost from its topical theme, indirect as it is. Unfortunately, it's not one-tenth as interesting as what you can see at home during a nightly cable surf as U.S. war policy is debated.

This movie should have been called Crocodile Tears of the Sun.

The film is a strictly no-bull proposition.

At its best, the film is a nightmare embossed on a postcard -- horrific and ominously gorgeous.

This Black Hawk Down theft is a trial by cliche.

Will a thinking audience really buy the image of helpless, grateful people bestowing kisses and victory songs upon Willis as the representative of all things American: power, guts, compassion?

What's noteworthy is that Tears is simultaneously a gripping action tale and a plea for a policy of engagement, of humanitarian intervention, in parts of the world where oil is not at stake.

Just smart and novel enough to not be mistaken for military propaganda.

In a movie with so much graphic suffering by innocent Africans, it's a bit disconcerting that so much loving attention is paid to Bruce Willis's anguished mug.

Until it descends into mindless routine action in the climactic scenes, Tears of the Sun is essentially an impressionistic nightmare ...

Flashy on the surface, Tears of the Sun is shallow at the heart.

Tears of the Sun has a title that makes no sense whatsoever. The film's message, on the other hand, makes too much sense -- it's simplistic and reactionary and designed to get hearts pumping but not minds thinking.

Washington may like the timing, but the serious considerations of war and horror here are ultimately undermined by sentiment and schlock.

Tears of the Sun may make you weep, but not for joy.

Deserves the bad reviews and the lackluster earnings it has accumulated thus far.

Raping and pillaging and blowing things up is mainly what this movie is about, although it claims to show how the most robotic, dehumanized soldiers can be transformed by human suffering.

Uninvolving due to stick-figure characters and off-putting in its images of technology-enhanced Yanks striding like benevolent giants among helpless Third World victims.

Timely but confused Black Hawk Down wannabe.

Willis' performance redeems much of the film.

If you ever wanted a reason to root for a righteous invasion, this sequence -- like My Lai but improved because it's perpetrated by the bad guys -- provides it.

Like most politicians and some columnists, the script kindly spares us any historical context or confusing detail.