Bruce Willis’ tragic forced retirement from acting has left action fans nostalgic for all the big screen memories he’s left behind. “Tears of the Sun,” a 2003 action drama starring Willis and helmed by “The Equalizer” trilogy director Antoine Fuqua, has seen a recent renaissance on free streamer Tubi, climbing to third place on its most-viewed chart on October 1, a position it continues to hold as of this writing (via FlixPatrol).

“Tears of the Sun” features Willis as Navy SEAL A. K. Waters. He and his team are dropped into Nigeria and tasked with extracting U.S. citizen and humanitarian aid Dr. Lena Fiore Kendricks (Monica Bellucci) from a Catholic mission in the war-torn country. But Kendricks won’t go anywhere without her patients or fellow doctors, increasing the operation’s difficulty to unheard-of dimensions. The SEALS find themselves battling through the jungle to get everyone to safety. 

Will they all get out in one piece? One thing’s for sure — what didn’t get out safe was the film’s reputation among critics.

Most reviewers weren’t kind to “Tears of the Sun” among its March 2003 release. On Rotten Tomatoes, it bears a 34% approval rating from 154 critics, with the majority considering the venture as just another generic action flick. Not quite one of the worst Bruce Willis movies according to Rotten Tomatoes, but still bad enough to be notable.

An example of a positive review came from Roger Ebert, who gave the film three stars, saying “‘Tears of the Sun’ is a film constructed out of rain, cinematography and the face of Bruce Willis. These materials are sufficient to build a film almost as good as if there had been a better screenplay.” In addition to its middling critical response, “Tears of the Sun” failed to attract audiences, bringing in only $86 million on an estimated budget of between $75 and $100 million.

It’s a film that left its mark on those who created it, quite literally in the case of Willis, who filed suit against production company Revolution Studios. The actor claimed bodily and mental harm occurred on set after being struck in the forehead with a piece of debris. The suit was settled out of court. Since the film’s release, fans have worried this on-set injury may be linked to his frontotemporal dementia diagnosis, adding a retroactive layer of tragedy to the movie’s already difficult subject matter.