History Film / TearsOfTheSun

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Kendricks, Azuka and many other refugees make it to Cameroon, along with Waters, Zee, Red and Doc, but many more died on the way, and Nigeria is still under the control of genocidal thugs.]]

* BreastAttack: A horrible, stomach-turning example shows up in the village massacre sequence, when the team stumbles across a woman bleeding to death after a rebel cut off both her breasts. Zee is so horrified and enraged that he forces the culprit to look her in the eyes before Zee pulls his knife and stabs the young militiaman to death.

* ChildSoldiers: One of the soldiers participating in the massacre at the village is one. Mohawk (who shot him) is deeply rattled.

* NotWhatISignedOnFor: Notably, when Waters talks to his men about why he's been ignoring his orders and trying to save all the refugees, and tells them they're free to do what they want, one of his men notes that they ''shouldn't'' be getting involved, that it's not their war and not their business...and then says "As for what I think we should do, you know where I stand."

* WarIsHell: ''Nothing'' about the journey to Cameroon is pretty, from infirm and amputated patients at the mission to hellish weather to constantly having to move because of enemy pursuit to an utterly reprehensible ethnic cleansing.

* SceneryPorn

* WarIsHell

* ImprobableAge: Inverted. Someone as old as Waters should not be a Lieutenant, he should be in a command post or out of the service. Realistically, he's probably a Lieutenant ''Colonel'', in which case calling him a Lieutenant is an ''insult''.

* ImprobableAge: Inverted. Someone as old as Waters should not be a Lieutenant, he should be in a command post or out of the service.

* InstantDeathBullet: Averted. One fatally wounded soldier is able to run and fight for some time before he and his comrades realize. Another sequence has a soldier taking a sniper bullet through the shoulder and falling down. After a few tense seconds, it's revealed that he dropped down to avoid getting hit by another bullet (he was in tall grass), and after getting patched up, he picks up his gun and continues fighting. [[spoiler: He still dies, but takes a few more bullets to do so.]]

-->Tears of the Sun ''is a film constructed out of rain, cinematography and the face of Bruce Willis. These materials are sufficient to build a film almost as good as if there had been a better screenplay.''
-->-'''Creator/RogerEbert'''

** The final airstrike is a confusing, very Hollywood mess as the air support preforms an attack at ridiculously low level with some sort of cluster napalm missile that was never loa

* JustPlaneWrong: The F-18s are launched off the carrier in slick configuration (no suspended weapons or equipment); the next shot shows them with wing tanks; then they are shown with a full weapons load-out. -
*** In-flight ordnance crews armed the aircraft after take-off!
** Then they show the planes firing their wingtip AIM-120 (air to air) missiles at the ground.
* KillItWithFire: F/A-18s dropping bombs on the rebels that were pursuing the team.

Not to be confused with the ''{{Emberverse}}'' book ''The Tears of the Sun''.

* StockSoundEffects: The crying newborn sound effect, used for a 3-4 year old kid. [[SpecialEffectFailure Made even more jarring by having it start playing and the kid is not even opening its mouth]].

* TooDumbToLive: Dr. Kendricks, she endangers the whole mission by willfully withholding information. She survives though.

* BadassBystander: The refugees do took up arms to both defend themselves and aid the SEAL team, especially the village and the finale.

* BeingEvilSucks: Lt. A.K. Waters said that [[TearJerker he can't even remember the last time he did the right thing]].

''Tears of the Sun'' is a 2003 American war film, depicting a United States Navy SEAL team rescue mission amidst a civil war in the West African country of Nigeria. Lt. A.K. Waters (BruceWillis) commands the team sent to rescue U.S. citizen Dr. Lena Fiore Kendricks (Creator/MonicaBellucci) from the civil war en route to her jungle hospital.

* GenreSavvy: The [=SEALs=] show signs of this. [[spoiler: After learning that the rebels were able to track them across the jungle at night, they quickly deduce that someone is transmitting their location. They then wonder ''why'' someone would bother to do this. After learning that there is in fact a mole, they demand to know why someone would care that much about a group of refugees.]]

* AmericaSavesTheDay: A beef many critics had with the film. Which is ironic since the last thing the US wanted to do, in the film, was to be officially and directly involved.
** Considering how omnipresent this trope is, it is baffling critics would single out such a subtle representation.

** Most prominently, in the final battle, the outnumbered [=SEALs=] are correctly performing the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_Peel center peel, Kiting retreating while performing suppressive fire]].

'''''Tears of the Sun''''' is a 2003 American war film, depicting a United States Navy SEAL team rescue mission amidst a civil war in the West African country of Nigeria. Lt. A.K. Waters (BruceWillis) commands the team sent to rescue U.S. citizen Dr. Lena Fiore Kendricks (Creator/MonicaBellucci) from the civil war en route to her jungle hospital.

** In fact of the soldiers who do die, most are shot several times before doing so. The other may have only been hit once, in the stomach, but it took awhile for him to die. Most of the survivors have been shot as well.

** [[spoiler:Should be noted that by that point, Waters has saved Kendrick's life, openly risked his career to take the refugees to the border and the life of the men under him, and engaged in unlawful combat to stop the massacre at a village.]]

** Then they show the pilots using their [=HUDs=] to lock on to enemy combatants (which cannot be done even with the most sophisticated targeting systems)
*** Actually, they're not using a sophisticated targeting system, but the HUDs "Point of Impact" reticule (although it is shown incorrectly) to line up the ordinance for delivery. In reality, the PIPR looks like [[http://wiki.hoggit.us/images/thumb/c/cd/HUD_CCRP_ANNOTATED.png/400px-HUD_CCRP_ANNOTATED.png this]], and only comes up with bombs are selected, with a modified version for rockets, and another ([[http://www.pushing-pixels.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/mig-29_f_18_gun_camera.jpg that's tied to the aircrafts radar]]) for the gun.

** Justified however as Waters could be a Mustang, having first enlisted in the Navy, and was commissioned as an officer sometime later (likely sometime before his SEAL training). Also, in the US Navy, the rank of "Lieutenant" is equivalent to the rank of "Captain" in the US Air Force or Army (O-3)

* FriendlySniper: Both "Flea" and "Silk" can be considered this. Despite using an M4 and M14 as their main weapons.

'''''Tears of the Sun''''' is an 2003 American war film, depicting a United States Navy SEAL team rescue mission amidst a civil war in the West African country of Nigeria. Lt. A.K. Waters (BruceWillis) commands the team sent to rescue U.S. citizen Dr. Lena Fiore Kendricks (Creator/MonicaBellucci) from the civil war en route to her jungle hospital.

Lt. A.K. Waters is a veteran Navy SEAL whose commander has given his team a special assignment. A Central African nation is expected to explode into war at any moment, and Waters and his cohorts are to escort any American citizens in the area to safety, most notably Dr. Lena Kendricks, a doctor from the United States who has set up a clinic in the jungle. Waters and his men find Kendricks, but she refuses to leave with them unless she can bring along 70 refugees who have been left to her care. Kendricks makes it clear that if they are left behind, the refugees will face certain death, but Waters's C.O. insists he bring back Kendricks -- but not her patients. Forced by his conscience to disobey orders, Waters and his team race against time to escort the refugees to a border town where they will find safe haven before invading troops can ambush them.

* CatScare: or boar in this case.

* EmpathicEnvironment: Played with. When they killed the priest at the refugee camp, the jungle animals react to it, and the soldiers do seem to notice the change in behavior.