Tears of the Sun

Of all the barbarities in all the world - not least in Africa - Hollywood had to wade into a fabricated civil war in Nigeria. At least this po-faced military-adventuring tub-thumper doesn't sneer the way Wag the Dog did at the idea of Albanian unrest. Then again, that might have relieved the suffocating banality of its African abstract, which encompasses local victims and villains and US flashfire fighters bound by the rulebook. 'God already left Africa' is, then, Willis's navy grunt's sum wisdom on the matter. Our hero and his platoon are charged with airlifting a Médecins Sans Frontières doctor (Bellucci) to safety. However, bundling the little lady into a 'copter and away turns out to be not so wham-bam. There's a moment pregnant with bathos as the chopper rises over the killing fields: Willis's cheeks clench, a taut grimace slowly spreads across his face, before he finally pronounces, 'Let's turn her around.' (Tit for tat: Bellucci's shirt slips a button.) From here on it's pretty much 'Die Hard in the Jungle', with carefully demarcated standards for representing American and 'Nigerian' violence. But, er, psychology? Culture? History? Willis: 'When I figure it out, I'll let you know.'