Trivia / Tears of the Sun

• Box Office Bomb: The movie had a $75 million budget, but only made $86.5 million worldwide.
• California Doubling: The entire movie takes place in Africa, but was shot in Hawaii.
• Dyeing for Your Art: The actors portraying SEALs attended an intensive bootcamp in preparation. Bruce Willis says that each man lost at least 15 pounds in less than a week.
• Enforced Method Acting: An unintentional example. Many of the extras were real refugees fleeing genocide. During the village assault scene, they were told to act as if they were really watching a village being pillaged... something that they had actually experienced. Some had flashbacks, and the tears and sadness on their faces are real.
• Follow the Leader: Followed up on trends started by both Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down before it. The former for garnering general interest in realistically violent but respectful war films and the latter for inspiring other modern warfare/African-themed films in the genre.
• Playing Against Type: Nick Chinlund plays a character who isn’t a villain.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The film was originally titled Rules of Engagement but no one in production liked it because it sounded too generic. Bruce Willis was presented the script for a fourth Die Hard film and saw that it was subtitled Tears of the Sun. He agreed to appear in what became Live Free or Die Hard in exchange for getting to use Tears of the Sun for this film.
  • The village clearing scene was originally much more graphically violent. Several atrocities were cut and many set elements were matted out via CGI because everyone felt that it was just too much for audiences to bear.
  • The deleted scenes flesh out the baddies more, explaining their motivations and views, giving them more depth than the somewhat flat version in the finished film.

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