This film, in this way, from beginning to end, might have really amounted to something. I intuit "input" from producers, studio executives, story consultants and the like, who found it their duty to dumb it down by cobbling together a conventional action climax. The last half hour of "Tears of the Sun," with its routine gun battles, explosions, machine-gun bursts, is made from off-the-shelf elements. If we can see this sort of close combat done well in a film that is really about it, like Mel Gibson's "We Were Soldiers," why do we have to see it done merely competently, in a movie that is not really about it? Where the screenplay originally intended to go, I cannot say, but it's my guess that at an earlier stage it was more thoughtful and sad, more accepting of the hopelessness of the situation in Africa, where "civil war" has become the polite term for genocide. The movie knows a lot about Africa, lets us see that, then has to pretend it doesn't.
Willis, for example, has a scene in the movie where, as a woman approaches a river, he emerges suddenly from beneath the water to grab her, silence her, and tell her he will not hurt her. This scene is laughable, but effective, Laughable, because (a) hiding under the water and breathing through a reed, how can the character know the woman will approach the river at precisely that point? and (b) since he will have to spend the entire mission in the same clothes, is it wise to soak all of his gear when staying dry is an alternative? Yet his face, so fearsome in camouflage, provides him with a sensational entrance and the movie with a sharp shudder of surprise. There is a way in which movies like "Tears of the Sun" can be enjoyed for their very texture. For the few words Willis uses, and the way he uses them. For the intelligence of the woman doctor, whose agenda is not the same as his. For the camaraderie of the Navy Seal unit, which follows its leader even when he follows his conscience instead of orders. For the way the editor, Conrad Buff, creates a minimalist mood in setup scenes of terse understatement; he doesn't hurry, he doesn't linger. If only the filmmakers had been allowed to follow the movie where it wanted to go--into some existential heart of darkness, I suspect--instead of detouring into the suburbs of safe Hollywood convention.
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