Tears of the Sun (2003)

Steve's Rule of Effective Moviegoing, #47: Any 'prestige' pictures that get released prior to May 1st will inevitably suck. And boy, did this 'noble' war flick suck. Shameless and manipulative in the extreme, it more or less states that the U.S. military can and should intervene anywhere at anytime for any reason because we're the good guys dammit and we're noble and selfless and hey look at that fetus! Even by the constraints of thinly-veiled-propaganda *ahem* I mean, noble war movies, Monica Bellucci's character is pretty senseless and wrong-headed -- an attempt by the filmmakers to inject artificial drama into a scenario that already had plenty thank you very much. (If I had a tribe of refugees with me, and I knew a rebel force was pursuing us with the intent of horribly murdering us, I wouldn't insist on stopping to rest every fifteen minutes. In fact, I'd probably double-time the refugees until their feet fell off. But that's just me.) The climax of this film is lousy even in comparison to the rest of the film.

Grade: D