TEARS OF THE SUN

(Columbia TriStar) Holocaust movies can get away with mass generalizations about an oppressed people because we as a culture have come to acknowledge, if not understand, the horrors of such places as Auschwitz, Krakow, and Dachau. Not so with the varied and vicious unrest in many African nations. So, while watching the carefully orchestrated atrocities that director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) puts on the screen, the audience–denied any meaningful understanding of who the victims are and why they’re being ethnically cleansed–must remain detached. They also have no choice but to pay unearned attention to Willis’ conflicted Navy SEAL and the woman he must escort from the Nigerian war zone, a pretty white doctor played by Bellucci, who, as in The Matrix Reloaded, seems to have been cast solely for the way her bosom heaves.