Tears of the Sun is a 2003 American action thriller film[4] directed by Antoine Fuqua. It depicts a fictitious U.S. Navy SEAL team rescue mission amidst the 21st-century version of the civil war in Nigeria.[5][6] Lieutenant A.K. Waters (Bruce Willis) commands the team sent to rescue U.S. citizen Dr. Lena Fiore Kendricks (Monica Bellucci) before the approaching rebels reach her jungle hospital.

A coup d’état led by exiled General Mustafa Yakubu overthrows the President of Nigeria Samuel Azuka, sending Nigeria into chaos and causing an ethnic conflict between the Fulani Muslims and the Christian Igbo. Samuel and his family are assassinated, and foreigners are evacuated from the country. Aboard the Harry S. Truman, a Navy Seal team, led by A.K. Waters, is tasked by Captain Bill Rhodes to extract Dr. Lena Fiore Kendricks, a U.S. citizen by marriage to the late Dr. John Kendricks who was killed by rebels in Sierra Leone and the mission’s priest and two nuns, should they choose to come.

The team reaches Kendricks, who refuses to leave without her patients. Waters calls Rhodes for options; after a conversation, he concedes to Kendricks’ wishes and agrees to take those refugees who can walk. Kendricks begins assembling the able-bodied; the priest and the nuns stay behind to care for the injured.

Irritated and behind schedule, the team and the refugees leave the hospital mission after daybreak. At nightfall, they take a break when rebels approach their position, and Waters stealthily kills one to prevent them from being discovered. Kendricks warns Waters that the rebels are going to the mission, but he is determined to carry out his orders, and they continue to the extraction point. At the mission, the staff and refugees are detained by the rebels. Despite the priest’s pleas for mercy, the rebels murder him and the remaining occupants.

When the team arrives at the extraction point, Waters’ initial plan becomes clear: the SEALs turn away the refugees from the waiting helicopter. Waters forces Kendricks into the helicopter against her will, leaving the refugees stranded in the jungle, defenseless against the rebels. En route back to Harry Truman, they fly over the original mission compound, seeing it destroyed and all its occupants murdered.