When is a mindless and mediocre action film more than just a mindless and mediocre action film?  When the writers throw in some real-life background to make it seem deep, meaningful, and topical.  The only problem with this theory is that it doesn't work.  At its core, such a film is still just an action movie and the extra background does nothing but slow the film down.  Case in point:  Tears of the Sun, a Bruce Willis vehicle that doesn't have enough action to make it very interesting and not enough story to make it deep and meaningful.  This film has been released on Blu-ray adding to the ever-growing selection of not-so-great movies that are available on the format.

A civil war has erupted in Nigeria and the democratically elected ruler and his family have been killed.  Navy Seal Lieutenant A.K. Waters (Bruce Willis) and his squad of Special-Ops forces have been ordered by their commander Captain Bill Rhodes (Tom Skerritt) to enter the country, find an American doctor working there, Lena Kendricks (Monica Bellucci), and escort her safely out of the war-torn region.  When Water and company arrive at the church where Kendricks has set up a makeshift hospital, they discover that the doctor won't leave unless she can bring the refugees living at the church with her.  If they are left, the rebels will certainly torture and kill them as part of their ethnic cleansing campaign.

At first Waters trick Kendricks into leaving, but when he sees just what destruction and bloodshed the rebels are causing, he has a change of heart.  Risking his life, and the life of his men, Waters promises to bring the group of wounded people to safety in neighboring Cameroon.  What he doesn't know is that the rebels have a very good reason for wanting this group of refugees dead, and they'll chase them through the jungles to make sure that happens.  With no support from his commander, it's up to this small group of highly trained US soldiers to protect and save their charges.

When all is said and done, this film just doesn't work well.  As a comment on the political unrest in Africa, it is too superficial.  The rebels are bad evil people, and the king who was killed was 'democratically elected' as the movie reminds us over and over.  The problems that the country faces and the reasons for rebellion were never examined; it's not that type of movie.  But as an action film it fails almost as spectacularly.  There isn't much more than people walking through a jungle and talking for the first half hour, and even then there are only two good action sequences in the whole film.  It just doesn't pack the excitement and thrills that a good popcorn flick should.

The characters are all paper thin caricatures that really don't have personalities. You never get to know any of the men under Waters command at all.  Waters is just as much of a cipher himself, and the way he risks the lives of his men never rings true.  (Of course he's in touch with his commander who never actually orders him to abandon his fool hardy scheme.  He just "strongly recommends" that he leaves the refugees behind. This was also hard to swallow.)
 

Note: The only Blu Ray DVD player on the market at the time of this review is the Samsung BD P1000. Apparently an error crept into the design, and a noise reduction algorithm on one of the chips was turned on which creates a softer picture. As yet there is no fix for this.

Video:

I was a bit disappointed with the 2.40:1 widescreen image.  Like many BR discs, it was a mixed bag.  Much of the movie takes place in an African jungle with overhanging foliage making the picture a bit dark.  This is what the director intended, no doubt, but these scenes weren't reproduced very well.  Details weren't as strong in the shadows as I was hoping, and these low light scenes were very flat and lacked dimensionality.  There is a problem with the colors too.  They are off in a few places.  When Tom Skerritt is on the deck of an aircraft carrier at the beginning, his skin has an orange hue.  It looks like he's jaundice or something.  There are several time throughout the movie where the sky appears a bit purple-ish too.  I have no idea how they let these odd colors get into the final product, it could have been adjusted in the studio, but they did.

On the positive side, when the film did get out into the light the image looked much better.  The explosions really pop off the screen, and the level of detail is very good.  The green jungle was very lush, (and there was no problem with those colors) and the contrast was excellent.  It's too bad the low light scenes didn't look that good.

Audio:

As with the video, the audio isn't quite up to par.  Sony has provided an uncompressed 5.1 PCM track as well as DD 5.1 tracks in English and French.  While the fidelity of the PCM track was excellent and it had a nice dynamic range, the levels were off a bit.  If you set to audio level so that a majority of the movie is loud enough, the explosions are too high.  These effects pull you out of the film so you can turn the volume down.  Conversely, when people whisper or talk quietly it was very hard to hear what they were saying.  I had to rewind the movie and turn the volume up a bit to catch what was being said a few times.  I found I was constantly fiddling with the volume.  I never did find a level where the quiet sounds were audible and the loud noises weren't overwhelming.

Aside from that there was no distortion, dropouts, or other audio defects.  There are subtitles in seven languages (including English).

Extras:

Once again Sony gives us some, but not all, of the bonus features presented on the SD DVD.  Starting off the extras section are eight deleted scenes.  These mainly extended dialog sequences didn't do much for me.  They didn't add to the characterization or flesh the movie out, and deserved to be cut.

There are also two commentary tracks, one with the director and a second one with the writers.  I found the director's track to be a pretty standard commentary.  It wasn't boring but not very exciting either.  The writer's track was a bit more interesting, giving a good amount of background and historical information about Africa and the problems that continent has been having.

There's also a 'factoid track'; pop-up trivia about both the cast and crew and the history of Africa.  Watching this turned on is a bit distracting the first time you see the movie, it's a nice to activate it if you've already seen the film.

Final Thoughts:

This film just doesn't work.  As an action film there isn't enough action, and as a social commentary it is too thin.  The characters are one dimensional and the plot has a lot of holes.  On top of that this Blu-ray presentation isn't exactly stellar.  The colors are strange in places and many of the jungle scenes look flat and lifeless.  Overall there isn't a good reason to pick up this disc.  Skip it.