Movie Review: Tears Of The Sun (2003)

A war action movie, Tears Of The Sun has noble intentions to increase awareness of atrocities in Africa, but a feeble script never strikes the right tones.

A civil war erupts in Nigeria with the overthrow of democratically elected President Azuka by a brutal rebel army. The United States Navy conducts dangerous missions to extract foreign nationals from the unfolding chaos. Lieutenant Waters (Bruce Willis) of the Navy SEALs and his small unit of elite soldiers are tasked by Captain Rhodes (Tom Skerritt) to rescue Dr. Lena Kendricks (Monica Bellucci) from a remote medical mission.

With the rebel army closing in Waters and his men locate Kendricks, but she insists her patients also be rescued. Waters reluctantly agrees and leads a large group of civilians towards the rendezvous site with the extraction helicopters, evading rebel patrols along the way. But both the Lieutenant and the doctor are keeping secrets from each other, and an already hazardous mission gets much more complicated when Waters starts to care about the plight of civilians and gets his squadron involved in the conflict.

Co-produced by Willis, Tears Of The Sun delves into the dirty wars of the dark continent with eyes wide open. Director Antoine Fuqua leaves no doubt the film is intended as a shocking wake-up call to the brutalities that often go unreported, and the film stops and lingers as villagers are slaughtered, raped and set on fire, child soldiers are pressed into service and mothers are maimed and their infants killed.

While Willis and his men (including stock turns by Cole Hauser, Eamonn Walker and Nick Chinlund) are supposed to be the jaded veterans jolted into taking a stand by what they are witnessing, the script by Alex Lasker and Patrick Cirillo falls far short. With no character depth whatsoever, the film delivers plastic and prepackaged emotions and flat drama. Neither Waters nor Doctor Kendricks are provided any context or compelling intensity, and the Africans are all reduced to horribly shallow and stereotypical representations of helpless locals awaiting rescue by mostly white American men.

Stylistically Fuqua does better in portraying an eternally wet jungle aesthetic, and the few but fierce action scenes almost save the movie. One sequence features the SEALs stealthily moving against murderous rebels terrorizing a village, while the final battle is a climactic backs-against-the-wall, few-against-many epic showdown. The action is vivid, including relatively accurate portrayals of battlefield tactics.

But unfortunately Tears Of The Sun ends with a gag-inducing stand-and-cheer (literally) celebration of the all-conquering US military by ever grateful black locals, the film collapsing far from its intentions and into the most crass version of a recruitment tool targeting the easily influenced.

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Movie Review: Acts Of Violence (2018)

A dumb action thriller, Acts Of Violence is underproduced, badly written and blandly executed.

In Cleveland, Deklan MacGregor (Cole Hauser) is an army veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. His brothers Brandon (Shawn Ashmore) and Roman MacGregor (Ashton Holmes) are better adjusted, with Brandon married to Jessa (Tiffany Brouwer) and Roman engaged to Mia (Melissa Bolona).

When Mia goes out to party with her girlfriends, she insults goons working for human trafficker Max (Mike Epps). Soon Mia is abducted and held in captivity. Deklan rallies his brothers to mount a paramilitary rescue operation, while detectives James Avery (Bruce Willis) and Brooke Baker (Sophia Bush) try to keep up with the escalating violence.

Directed by Brett Donowho, Acts Of Violence is a soulless and witless grade Z flick, stultifyingly familiar and routine. The production values are at the basic television level, with the film apparently shot in 15 days, and Willis on set for a grand total of one day.

Despite the obvious lack of polish, Donowho deserves some credit for delivering coherent, jerk-free action sequences, amidst a ridiculous plot full of holes, a complete absence of character depth, wooden acting, and stock dialogue.

The attempts to introduce familial ties as an emotional anchor flounder on the rocks of insincerity, while the PTSD theme is introduced in the first scene and then essentially ignored. While cheap action films will always be around, it is sad to see the once mighty Bruce Willis reduced to this.

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Movie Review: Pitch Black (2000)

A science fiction horror thriller, Pitch Black (later re-released on DVD as The Chronicles of Riddick: Pitch Black) introduces the character of Riddick in a solid if patchy adventure on a hostile planet.

Deep in space, an interplanetary merchant ship is damaged by a comet storm. With the captain killed, docking pilot Carolyn Fry (Radha Mitchell) crash-lands the stricken craft onto the surface of a seemingly deserted barren planet. The survivors include convicted murderer Richard B. Riddick (Vin Diesel), who is being transported by his captor bounty hunter William Johns (Cole Hauser). A Muslim Imam (Keith David), his children and a mysterious boy Jack are among the others who emerge from the wreckage.

The survivors stumble upon a small but abandoned outpost set-up by a geological expedition years prior, with a dropship in near-working condition. They also encounter monstrous killer creatures who live in caves deep below ground and can only survive in darkness. Riddick initially takes the opportunity to escape, but then strikes an uneasy deal with Johns to help the group survive. Fry believes they can repair the dropship and use it to escape, but the group discover that an eclipse will engulf the planet in darkness, giving the predatory creatures an opportunity to emerge and feast.

A mix of low-budget Aliens and humourless Tremors, Pitch Black may lack funding and fundamental originality, but makes up for it with better than average character dynamics. Riddick is an impressive anti-hero, a reluctant prisoner with a troubled background happy to kill on demand but with a humanity throbbing somewhere deep in his damaged soul. His surgically modified eyes, allowing him to pierce through the dark but needing shades for the light, is a nice touch. Riddick also gets to deliver a few deadpan lines of dialogue.

Providing the counterbalance to Riddick are three other survivors also worth knowing. Johns tries to pass himself off as the law, but he is less than he pretends, with weaknesses of his own. Fry, with Radha Mitchell in excellent form, is the reluctant leader, haunted by the decisions she had to make during the crash landing. And the Imam is another neat addition, a Muslim cleric and father introducing an uncommon tone.

But director and co-writer David Twohy has other challenges, probably budget-related, that cause a few stumbles. Much of the action is in the dark and not very clear, and some of the dialogue is mumbled and drowned out by the sound effects. The computer-generated creatures, mostly indistinct cousins of the Aliens, are a study in quantity not amounting to quality.

Still there are a few impressive visuals and the use of colour is inventive, Twohy and his cinematographer David Eggby creating a stark, scorched planet environment perfect for a severe survival test. And several of the death scenes are suitably sharp and brutal.

Pitch Black was Vin Diesel's breakout role, and also launched the intermittent Riddick franchise, a welcome reminder that movies are not totally dependent on comics for hero inspiration. Pitch Black could have used more polish, but nevertheless lights up with gory thrills and impressive heroics.

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