Exploiting Regional Fissures: Tears of the Sun -- A Movie Review

by Obi Akwani, MGV Editor

TEARS OF THE SUN (118 MIN.)Director: Antoine Fuqua.Producer: Joe RothWriters: Alex Lasker, Patrick Cirillo

The first I heard of "Tears of the Sun" was a month ago when someone posted a pre-release promotional clipping about the movie on Naijanet -- one of several Nigerian newsgroups on the Internet. Reviewing the accompanying audio-video clip convinced me that there was more than fiction at work in 'Tears of the Sun'. I was not alone in this perception.

Many Nigerians have expressed their reasons, on the Internet, for liking or disliking the movie. Some dismissed it as "just a movie,... a piece of fiction". Fortunately, not everyone saw it that way. Some saw the timing of the release of the movie as 'very wrong' because it seems to exploit the fragile state of affairs in Nigeria at a time when the country is about to go to the polls to elect a new government.

For me, the most telling feature of this movie is that it is faithful to a line of thought that has shaped Western policy in Africa since the colonial era. This is a self-fulfilling pattern of theoretic thinking that supports the prevailing Western perception of self-interest in foreign policy development. In the late 1950s and early '60s in Nigeria such thinking favored Northern regionalists who with British colonist support emerged in firm control of the Nigerian government.

Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union some Western thinkers (see Robert D. Kaplan, 'The Coming Anarchy' The Atlantic Monthly, February 1994) have promulgated a pattern of developments in which African states disintegrate amid crisis and loss of government control -- a kind of balkanization that will see the current states splinter into smaller ethnic nations. In Nigeria it is the long-out-power South who have become the poster child of this policy thrust. The most aggrieved of these Southerners, the Igbos, may form the sharp edge of the wedge that will pry apart the Nigerian nation-state.

This is the purview of those who see the emergence of a new world order under American hegemony -- the sole world super-power. They discount the ideas of African thinkers like Ali A. Mazrui, director, Institute of Global Cultural Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton, who see a more positive and less crisis bound development of integration into larger units. Mazrui sees Nigeria as one of the potential points of this coalition into larger states in the West African region in the 21st century.

One week ago (March 16), I went to see the movie and came away even more strongly convinced about its purpose. I went armed with note-pad and a pen in case I found it complicated and had to make notes. I need not have bothered. For someone like me with a firsthand knowledge of the historical circumstances it seeks to exploit, the movie is a straight forward affair.

The plot is simple enough: A team of Navy SEALs under Lieutenant A.K. Waters (Bruce Willis) is sent in to rescue an American doctor and 'beauty in distress', Dr. Lena Kendricks (Monica Bellucci) in a Catholic medical mission in the eastern part of strife-torn Nigeria.

The country's democratically elected leader, with a suspiciously Igbo-sounding name, has been assassinated, all members of his family presumably eliminated with him and the country has fallen into 'rebel' hands with leader, 'Gowon' in-charge.

The SEALs find their doctor, but soldiers loyal to the new 'rebel' leader are closing in, yet the doctor refuses to leave without her people (70 locals - mission workers, patients and refugees). Against orders Waters abandons an airlift out of danger for the doctor and decides to lead the group through the jungle to safety in next-door Cameroon.

This is where the adventure really starts. We are treated to the salutary brutal mayhem (rape and slaughter) committed by the bad guys -- Nigerian 'rebel' soldiers, who remarkably speak Hausa (language of the Muslim North) -- against the almost helpless Igbo-speaking Eastern loyalists. The SEALs engage the Nigerian soldiers in sporadic firefights while still making their way to the border.

'Tears of the Sun', at least, seems to have some respect for Nigerian soldiery -- unlike 'Dogs of War', that other simpleton of a movie that saw a handful of Westerners fly in, defeat an African army and takeover the government in one afternoon. It depicts the Nigerian soldiers as a brave, hard-fighting militarily astute bunch who were on the verge of wiping out the SEALs before American air support was called in from a nearby carrier.

'Tears of the Sun' opens with a broad map of Nigeria showing clearly the ethnic divisions of the country and closes with the son of the late president and the hereditary 'tribal' leader of the Igbos -- whose presence among the fleeing refugees is revealed to be real reason the Nigerian troops were pursuing the SEALs across the eastern jungle -- surrounded by his loyal followers raising his arm in a 'Black Power' salute.

'Tears of the Sun' is an insidious little piece of propaganda that exploits existing regional fissures in the Nigerian polity. I can't help comparing it to the propaganda leaflet dropping that preceded the most recent invasion of Iraq. One wanders what fate awaits Nigeria should such a scenario unfold.

About the only people who may like this film are die hard action movie buffs un-interested in global politics. Even then, purely as an action movie, I can only rate it mediocre. The other group that may like it are disaffected Nigerian regionalists, those who have accepted that balkanization is the only suitable fate the country. For the Eastern 'Biafrans' it conjures up memories of the civil war of 35 years ago and the title cannot but be a reminder of the once lost 'Land of the Rising Sun' which they hope to someday regain. This is the sort of movie we have in "Tears of the Sun.'