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Tears of the Sun
Metascore
48 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 36 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 12 out of 36
  2. Mixed: 17 out of 36
  3. Negative: 7 out of 36
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  1. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Stephen Hunter
    90
    The film is a strictly no-bull proposition.
  2. Dallas Observer
    Reviewed by: Gregory Weinkauf
    80
    The movie remains engaging, with a couple of sequences verging on stunning.
  3. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: J.R. Jones
    80
    By turns morally compelling and racially paternalistic, this provocative drama may be the first halfway truthful war movie to hit multiplexes since "Three Kings."
  4. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    75
    Until it descends into mindless routine action in the climactic scenes, Tears of the Sun is essentially an impressionistic nightmare.
  5. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Wesley Morris
    75
    The film would be just as powerful, if less likely to saturate suburban megaplexes and flatter its patrons, were its saviors -- I don't know - French.
  6. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    75
    Fuqua takes a genre picture and, by diverting the story onto an unconventional path, generates a sense of urgency. Tears of the Sun is not a great movie, but it is satisfying, and represents an example of accomplished filmmaking.
  7. Baltimore Sun
    Reviewed by: Chris Kaltenbach
    75
    Whenever its noble aims miss, Bruce Willis saves it.
  8. Charlotte Observer
    Reviewed by: Lawrence Toppman
    75
    Fuqua and his writers, Alex Lasker and Patrick Cirillo, have delivered not only the most satisfying and plausible action movie in months but one that's accidentally timely.
  9. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Desson Thomson
    70
    This is an odd amalgam of bleeding-heart sentimentality and over-the-top guts-and-glory action. You're not sure how to feel. But you're certainly not as moved and stunned as you were in "Black Hawk Down."
  10. The New Yorker
    Reviewed by: David Denby
    70
    Tears of the Sun may be a flattering myth, but it’s not a bad myth to be flattered by. [17 March 2003, p. 154]
    All this critic's reviews
  11. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Owen Gleiberman
    67
    Left wing? Right wing? Center? Who cares, as long as Bruce Willis is saving the world.
  12. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Wilmington
    63
    Fairly entertaining and often exciting, expertly done in a way, but not especially engaging or new, and not as emotionally involving as its title suggests.
  13. Newsweek
    Reviewed by: David Ansen
    60
    A schizoid action flick bogs down in lofty intentions.
  14. Variety
    Reviewed by: Todd McCarthy
    60
    This is one of those pictures that unavoidably becomes part of the zeitgeist due to its coincidental arrival at a precise moment in history when its themes play into current events.
  15. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: David Sterritt
    50
    The result is hardly a subtle film, but it has a stronger sense of combat's real costs and consequences than more sensationalistic pictures like "Black Hawk Down" and "We Were Soldiers" provide.
  16. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Lou Lumenick
    50
    Tried to turn this into a replay of its 2000 military-rescue hitBlack Hawk Down -- though, in the end, it's almost totally lacking in the serious hardware and viscerally paced action that propelled Ridley Scott's movie to the top of the box office.
  17. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Steven Rea
    50
    It's simplistic and reactionary and designed to get hearts pumping but not minds thinking.
  18. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Mick LaSalle
    50
    What pushes it above mediocrity is that it ends better than it begins.
  19. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Claudia Puig
    50
    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.
  20. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Rick Groen
    50
    The fiction that follows can be safely regarded as much more than a war movie -- hell, this is a pro-war movie. Were it a politician, it would be Donald Rumsfeld.
  21. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Maitland McDonagh
    50
    Has honorable aspirations, even as it becomes mired in mainstream movie conventions.
  22. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Shawn Levy
    50
    Fuqua has made three films before his newest, Tears of the Sun, and they've all begun well enough but then collapsed under the weight of his heavy-handed visual technique and his indifference to plot, character and logic.
  23. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: Peter Rainer
    50
    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. There’s an uncomfortable Great White Father (and Mother) aspect to this movie.
  24. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: John Powers
    50
    Despite the busy camera work, bombastic score and rapt attention to violence, director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) can't mask the script's white-savior paternalism.
  25. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kenneth Turan
    50
    May make you weep, but not in the way anyone intended. Handsomely made, well-meaning but finally frustrating and unsatisfying, this perplexing film is an example of a previously unseen hybrid, the socially conscious, humanitarian action movie. It doesn't appear to be a genre with much of a future.
  26. Slate
    Reviewed by: David Edelstein
    50
    At times, you could actually mistake Tears of the Sun for a blunt modern parable instead of an opportunistic mixture of up-to-the-minute atrocities and old-fashioned corn.
  27. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: Sean Axmaker
    42
    For a film so intent on the rules of engagement, this is hardly engaging drama.
  28. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Rick Kisonak
    40
    Aside from a few routine battle scenes, the movie's action consists mostly of people slogging slowly through non-stop rain. This is not interesting, much less exciting. The dialogue is hokey hero blather.
  29. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Stephanie Zacharek
    40
    There's a fine line dividing Hollywood tradition and overly manipulative junk, and Tears of the Sun crosses it.
  30. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jami Bernard
    38
    A preposterous action movie in which a Navy SEAL makes the world safe for democracy one continent at a time.
  31. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Scott Tobias
    30
    Impossible to swallow as truth, this Rambo treatment is equally hard to enjoy as escapism.
  32. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Dana Stevens
    30
    Unfortunately, the movie's real setting is a sentimental fantasy world, and its story is a spectacularly incoherent exercise in geopolitical wish fulfillment.
  33. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    25
    Director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) can stage action, but he can't save a trivializing, reactionary script featuring a Hollywood star (read America) as a global savior.
  34. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marc Savlov
    20
    It’s as deadly dull as the blunt end of a rifle.
  35. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Michael Atkinson
    20
    This "Black Hawk Down" theft is a trial by cliché until the climax, which suggests a dress rehearsal for the torching of Baghdad.
  36. Wall Street Journal
    Reviewed by: Joe Morgenstern
    20
    Relevance can't rescue this would-be epic from the swamps of inertia, absurdity and sentimentality.
    All this critic's reviews
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User Reviews

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User Score
6.6 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 47 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 22 out of 36
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 36
  3. Negative: 10 out of 36
  1. Alexander_Fred
    4
    The movie opens brilliantly offering a new look into war in contrast to the Vietnam/World II films such as Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, or Saving Private Ryan. Unfortunately this new look is not so good and I found myself soon begging for those classics. The only basis for Tears of the Sun is not in history, but in fiction. The film thus becomes tiresome soon after Bruce Willis enters the Nigerian village. By the end, we are left with lackluster acting (save for Willis), improbable and unbelievable circumstances including Willis disobeying direct orders without consequence, a cliched and poorly created love scenario between Willis and the good doctor, an ending more cliched than the love scenario and just as poorly built, and a directing style that is at times smooth and stylish, but at others cramped and hard to stomach. Tears of the Sun stands as one of the worse war movies of recent years, though with only two battle sequences in its over 2 hour length, war movie may be an improper description.… Full Review »
  2. MasterCorwin
    10
    This review contains spoilers, click full review link to view. It is strange to see its such - the actor whom it is difficult to present in other role, than to roles of the cool guy thrusting tens of bullets in any who will encroach on the American way of life. It is strange to look, how flow down on the person of the lieutenant rain drops, and to see his eyes. Eyes of the professional many long years killing by order of where will tell and in whom will specify. Eyes in which is brighter, than in the opinion of the person of any other trade, all pain of this silly is reflected, God of the damned world which is not able and doing not wish to learn to live in the consent with itself. Eyes in which depth, behind a wall of composure of the gone through fire and water person, the weariness hardly considerably decays. Both grief. And a question: what I for you, become hardened should make heart and soul Adam and Eve's living on this planet descendants that you at last have realized importance of each human life? How many still lives I that you has reached should take away, what it is impossible to kill or order to kill only because to you so it is pleasant or because you are obliged? Whom from you I should shoot down or kill, that the mankind has come round and has ceased is boastful to be trampled down knee-deep in own blood? This question is set to itself by each soldier. Not only at cinema, but also in life. But it is necessary to search for the answer to it very long. At times so happens that it comes only when the one who set, has already failed on the earth with the raked breast. And still each of them hopes that will find the answer not too late. That can make it still before will feel that for quite some time now to it already on all to spit, and the question that was once shone in the heart of eyes, was replaced with the cold, cynical and indifferent counter of death. And it... It has already found it. Not in words and not in books. And in eyes. In the opinion of Lena Kendricks, going mad of ignorance - it has survived or not. In the opinion of those whom conducted behind itself to the border and whom covered with fire in last furious and bloody firing. In the opinion of Slo, dying at it on hands. In the opinion of Lake, covered before death the body the Nigerian girl. The answer has appeared is simple. Easier the most simple question. Healthy fellow Mike was right, devil take it: "all it wasn't vain". After all if you want to rescue the whole world - begin at least with one person...… Full Review »
  3. lususgreene
    6
    Better than your average movie of this type Tears of the sun delivers a respectable story and good acting. Worth a watch, mabye worth buying for around $3. Nothing special here though really, it is just your normal slightly above average flick.… Full Review »
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