There really isn't that much new under the sun.

Bruce Willis's latest action thriller Tears of the Sun, opening today, is a routine rescue mission drama.

A group of elite U.S. soldiers must go into the centre of a conflict in a Third World country to rescue an American citizen.

The operatives are led by a career soldier who is going to have his mettle and heart tested when he has to deal with real people instead of cold orders.

In this case, that man of steely reserve is navy SEAL Lieut. A.K. Waters (Willis).

The country is Nigeria.

The conflict becomes a bloodbath when the democratic government is overthrown by a military madman and his troops.

Dr. Lena Kendricks (Monica Bellucci), the trapped American, is actually a Frenchwoman who married a prominent American doctor who lost his life healing the sick and wounded of this struggling nation.

Against all odds and his superior's orders, Waters will attempt to rescue not just Kendricks but her staff and some of the patients of her jungle clinic.

Most recently, Black Hawk Down and Windtalkers covered much of the same emotional, military and political territory as did Platoon and any number of Missing in Action flicks when the country in question was Vietnam.

So much for originality - but what gives Tears of the Sun an edge is Antoine Fuqua's direction.

As he showed in The Replacement Killers and Training Day, Fuqua has a knack for giving his action sequences a visceral intensity.

Things don't just blow up and guns don't just go off in a Fuqua movie.

They do so with a shocking realism and with obvious consequences. There are several scenes of slaughter by the military regime that are emotionally devastating.

It is a powerful condemnation of the kind of ethnic cleansing that often occurs in civil wars.

Observing the atrocities visited on the people of a small village, an American soldier asks why the conquerors would do such things.

With tears streaming down her face, a Nigerian woman replies simply that it is what they do.

There can be no other explanation because such actions are beyond comprehension.

Tears of the Sun tries hard to have a conscience and not just momentum, and it gets top credit for the times it hits its mark.

There are some gaping plot holes, but if they had been filled the movie would end about 20 minutes into the action. Overlooking them allows you to get to the thrilling climax.

Willis is in his minimalist acting mode. There is virtually no emotion in his voice or his face, so it's difficult to have too much empathy for him.

Bellucci is equally introspective, but she is able to say so much by doing so little.

Her Dr. Kendricks is such a strong presence and so heroic that Tears of the Sun becomes a behind-enemy-lines actioner that will appeal to women as well as its usual target male audience.

There are enough really strong supporting performances to sustain interest in the characters rather than simply in a plot that offers few genuine surprises.

The most disturbing thing about Tears of the Sun is that the events that make up the fiction have been fact in the recent past, and could very well be again in the near future.

(This film is rated AA)

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