YMMV / Tears of the Sun

• Anvilicious: The film ends with Burke's quote: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing".
• Awesome Music: Courtesy of Hans Zimmer, particularly "Cameroon Border Post".
• Complete Monster: Colonel Idris Sadick is a silent, xenophobic psychopath who shows full support towards General Mustafa Yakubu's violent Military Coup against the democratically elected President Samuel Azuka because it gives people like him a chance to slaughter civilians with impunity, allowing the rebels to rape, torture and kill people of all ages, including babies. Responsible for persecuting the Christian Ygbo tribe with mass killings and ethnic cleansing, Sadick leads his battalion to a hospital mission and gives the order for the rebels to massacre the defenseless people recovering there only mere moments after seeing that a priest had a crucifix on his neck. As part of the plan to kill the last remaining Azuka and destroy the Ygbo's royal bloodline, Sadick blackmails a refugee into wearing a tracking device under the threat that he would execute his entire family if he did not comply, which resulted in the rebels killing even more civilians and half of the main cast.
• Critical Dissonance: Critics were cold with the film, deriding it as a failed attempt at high-mindedness and giving it just 33% in Rotten Tomatoes. However, casual viewers were much more positive and doubled that percentage in most reviewing sites (and Roger Ebert, breaking from mainstream critics, gave it three of four stars).
• Harsher in Hindsight: The movie is a lot more difficult to watch knowing that a few years after the movie premiered, a brutal war would break out in northern Nigeria, with many of the same kind of atrocities portrayed here.
• He's Just Hiding: Despite his presence in the Final Battle, we never see Sadick caught up in the air strike that ends the battle, leading some to assume he fled during the battle.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: At the first sight, and despite what the America Saves the Day plot might make think, the film draws a substantially cynical view of US military - Waters and Rhodes are initially willing to abandon the refugees to a bloodbath, have to be heavily insisted by Dr. Kendricks not to, and even afterwards act unsympathetic towards them. However, according to insiders, the film is actually regarded highly among members of the U.S. military, not only for portraying how realistically unpredictable by definition a mission can be (see Black Hawk Down for a certainly worse, real life example), but also because, at the end, it still captures the humanitarian message they intend to represent.
• Narm Charm: The Edmund Burke quote, cited above. While by that point it can come across as corny and gratuitous, the soundtrack and feel of the ending make it surprisingly right as well.
• Nightmare Fuel: Pretty much 90% of the movie. The scariest part? These atrocities and horrors committed aren't too out of place as to what happened in Real Life. If anything, the film actually falls short compared to real life conflicts in Africa.
• Retroactive Recognition: The rebel colonel is played by Peter Mensah, who plays the Persian messenger in 300.
• Tear Jerker: Oh God, yes. The massacre the team stumbles upon being the worst instance, especially when an anguished and enraged Zee collars one of the last surviving rebels and forces him to look down on the dying woman he'd just mutilated before stabbing the man to death:
  "Look at it, motherfucker! Look at your work!!"
• Vindicated by History: The film both flopped at box office and failed with the critics, who saw it as Bruce Willis' cheap attempt to break out from his usual action formula. Nowadays, while not legendary, it is consistently considered a pretty decent war film and one of his most underrated works.