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DVD Tears of the Sun (Special Edition)
While it offers nothing new to the military action genre, Tears of the Sun distinguishes itself with fine acting, expert craftsmanship, and seriousness of purpose. Its familiar "extraction mission" plot is essentially similar to that of Black Hawk Down, involving a crack team of U.S. Special Ops commandos struggling to rescue innocent missionaries amidst the bloody horror of Nigerian ethnic cleansing. With Bruce Willis as their grizzled, no-nonsense commander, the skillful team enters a hot zone that gets even hotter when their "package"--an American national (Monica Bellucci) who runs the isolated mission--demands that 70 Nigerian villagers be included in the rescue. Willis's uneasy conscience leads him to defy orders and expand his mission, and in an ambitious follow up to Training Day, director Antoine Fuqua escalates tension and strike-force with considerable emotional impact. Originally considered as a potential entry in Willis's Die Hard series, and released on the eve of America's war with Iraq, Tears of the Sun admirably avoids jingoism with its rousing story of personal good vs. political evil. --Jeff Shannon
This movie is an example of racist ideology created to pacify apathetic American moviegoers that have heard that something bad is going on in Africa. The pretentious placement of an Edmund Burke quote ("All that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for enough good men to do nothing.") at the end of the film does nothing to place the Nigerian conflict in a historical context or provide a possible active role for the sympathetic viewer. It merely supports the apathy of the target audience: suburban Christian Republicans (note the subplot of Christian persecution in the Mission scenes). It also provides a fantasy image of the military-industrial complex as a humanitiarian force in order to resolve any tension the viewer may have about our current military adventures overseas.
As if this were not enough, Bruce Willis squints like a constipated monkey throughout the entire film.
Typical war movie
This movie is about a Navy special forces team led by LT. Waters that is sent into Nigeria to evacuate an American doctor before rebel soldiers reach her camp.
Everything is going according to plan until the doctor refuses to leave with the soldiers unless they take all of the refugees she is caring for as well. Lt. Waters agrees and takes everyone on a long and difficult hike through the jungle to a landing zone where they are met by Navy helicopters. Lt Water's and his men get the doctor on a helicopter but abandon the refugees - who will most definitely be brutally killed by the approaching rebels.
As the helicopters fly away Lt. Waters has a change of heart and goes back for the refugees. This to me seemed unbelievable but if they hadn't turned around there would be no more to the movie.
Once on the ground with the refugees they have to make another long hike to the country's border and safety. This is where the movie falls apart in my opinion and starts to rely on many tired war movie cliches. A very small band of highly trained soldiers who are saving the weak and innocent face imposible odds against a HUGE and heavily armed enemy force. As is always the case in this type of movie the "good guys" are able to pick off dozens of enemy soldiers while remaining virtually immune to to the hundreds of men firing fully automatic rifles, grenades and rockets at them. Of course there is always a couple of lesser important "good guy" characters that get killed in order to keep the action level high. The fighting continues, with the enemy getting closer by the second as the Americans struggle to reach the border - it almost looks like they are not going to make it but not surprisingly air support (in the form of two heavily loaded F-18s) swoops in, fires some missiles and wipes out all the enemy soldiers in big crowd pleasing explosions.
Great Bruce Movie
When you think of a Bruce Willis movie, this is it. Sent to protect refugees, Willis leads a group he can't leave behind through the heart of the African Jungle. Filled with plenty of action and drama this movie will please every Bruce Willis fan.
Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down conveys the raw, chaotic urgency of ground-force battle in a worst-case scenario. With exacting detail, the film re-creates the American siege of the Somalian city of Mogadishu in October 1993, when a 45-minute mission turned into a 16-hour ordeal of bloody urban warfare. Helicopter-borne U.S. Rangers were assigned to capture key lieutenants of Somali warlord Muhammad Farrah Aidid, but when two Black Hawk choppers were felled by rocket-propelled grenades, the U.S. soldiers were forced to fend for themselves in the battle-torn streets of Mogadishu, attacked from all sides by armed Aidid supporters. Based on author Mark Bowden's bestselling account of the battle, Scott's riveting, action-packed film follows a sharp ensemble cast in some of the most... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Josh Hartnett Director(s): Ridley Scott DVD Release Date: Released the 11 June 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Based on the book by Lt. Col. Harold Moore (ret.) and journalist Joseph Galloway, We Were Soldiers offers a dignified reminder that the Vietnam War yielded its own crop of American heroes. Departing from Hollywood's typically cynical treatment of the war, writer-director Randall Wallace focuses on the first engagement of American soldiers with the North Vietnamese enemy in November 1965. Moore (played with colorful nuance by Mel Gibson) and nearly 400 inexperienced troopers from the U.S. Air Cavalry were surrounded by 2,000 North Vietnamese Army soldiers, and the film re-creates this brutal firefight with graphic authenticity, while telling the parallel story of grieving army wives back home. While UPI reporter Galloway (Barry Pepper) risks his life to chronicle the battle, Wallace... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Randall Wallace DVD Release Date: Released the 20 August 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Style trumps substance in Man on Fire, a slick, brooding reunion of Crimson Tide star Denzel Washington and director Tony Scott. The ominous, crime-ridden setting is Mexico City, where a dour, alcoholic warrior with a mysterious Black Ops past (Washington) seeks redemption as the devoted bodyguard of a lovable 9-year-old girl (the precociously gifted Dakota Fanning), then responds with predictable fury when she is kidnapped. Prolific screenwriter Brian Helgeland (Mystic River, L.A. Confidential) sets a solid emotional foundation for Washington's tormented character, and Scott's stylistic excess compensates for a distended plot that's both repellently violent and viscerally absorbing. Among Scott's more distracting techniques is the use of free-roaming,... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Tony Scott DVD Release Date: Released the 14 September 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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A big-budget summer epic with money to burn and a scale worthy of its golden Hollywood predecessors, Ridley Scott's Gladiator is a rousing, grisly, action-packed epic that takes moviemaking back to the Roman Empire via computer-generated visual effects. While not as fluid as the computer work done for, say, Titanic, it's an impressive achievement that will leave you marveling at the glory that was Rome, when you're not marveling at the glory that is Russell Crowe. Starring as the heroic general Maximus, Crowe firmly cements his star status both in terms of screen presence and acting chops, carrying the film on his decidedly non-computer-generated shoulders as he goes from brave general to wounded fugitive to stoic slave to gladiator hero. Gladiator's plot is a... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Russell Crowe - Joaquin Phoenix - Connie Nielsen Director(s): Ridley Scott DVD Release Date: Released the 21 November 2000 This item is currently not available.
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You get two hostage crises for the price of one in Hostage, an overwrought but otherwise involving thriller grounded by Bruce Willis's solid lead performance. Making a dramatic pit-stop on his way to Die Hard 4, Willis plays a traumatized former Los Angeles hostage negotiator, now working as a nearly-divorced police chief in sleepy Ventura County, California. Willis suddenly finds himself amidst two potentially deadly stand-offs when a trio of hapless teenagers seize hostages in the fortress-like home of an accountant (Kevin Pollack) whose connections to organized crime result in Willis struggling to rescue his estranged wife and daughter, who are being held hostage by faceless thugs at an undisclosed location. Having directed two of Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell video... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Bruce Willis - Kevin Pollak - Serena Scott Thomas Director(s): Florent Emilio Siri DVD Release Date: Released the 21 June 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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