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261 reviews in total

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49 out of 74 people found the following review useful:
A good ride, good actors, some flaws., 1 February 2001

Author: Dr. Henry S. Itkin (henryitkin@lvcm.com) from Nevada, USA

Last week, as I considered ordering this DVD, I checked the IMDB rating and saw a "fair" 6.5. Since I like Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson, I placed the order. Like most roller coasters, I found it to be a good ride and Jones and Jackson did very credible jobs. The flaws in the movie have been correctly pointed out by numerous other reviewers. I was somewhat surprised that some of the most critical reviews were by US viewers. I fully understand how non-US citizens would be irritated by the stereotypes. I found it to be a very exciting movie from my particular perspective (US citizen, military family, male over 45). The scenes of combat when the marines are ordered to the US embassy in Yemen to safeguard our state department personnel were VERY well done, even to the point of gripping. The court scenes and conflicts of evidence or lack of evidence were interesting to me and I also understood, but did not agree with, the aims of the State Department. I don't think some of the reviewers are aware of what a person might do in such an extremely stressful situation as that of Colonel Childers (Jackson). It was fascinating to me to see what he did do and how he and others looked back on it. I would have given Rules of Engagement a 9 or 10, but for the flaws. It's a good movie though and well worth renting. It's an 8.

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44 out of 71 people found the following review useful:
History as told by the victors, 29 December 2003

Author: Mephisto-24 from Perth, Australia

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

SPOILER WARNING!!!

While this film has some good moments and strong performances from Samuel Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones (and a disappointing one from Ben Kingsley), I couldn't help but remember the "Chewbacca Defence" from South Park while watching the courtroom scenes: "This makes no sense!".

A marine colonel claims he gave the order to fire on a crowd, killing 83 people and wounding more than 100, ALL of whom were supposedly firing at his people with sub-machine guns and pistols - yet NOBODY else saw these weapons, not even the other marines who were returning fire (except, possibly, the three who died). Supposedly, none of them saw the weapons even AFTER the crowd was mown down.

The Yemenis then supposedly came in and removed every weapon, every spent cartridge, and - and this is REALLY ridiculous - every bullet and bullet-hole (the defence lawyer is told that all the shots came from snipers with rifles, and photographs a few bullet holes, but finds nothing to contradict this, throwing grave doubt on the colonel's judgement that the crowd was more dangerous than the snipers).

A videotape (destroyed by the National Security Advisor) shows the crowd shooting, but not one slug from any of those weapons is ever discovered. Were they all firing blanks? And why would the NSA and the ambassador (whose life was saved by the colonel) rather see a war hero executed than an aging ambassador lose his job and the Yemeni government embarrassed? (Maybe if it was Saudi Arabia, or Iraq in the 1980s, but Yemen?)

The court-martial then decides to believe that a videotape that they haven't seen, the existence of which can not be proven, vindicates their officer. Despite the glaring lack of any evidence to support his story and a mass that contradicts it, they acquit him. To believe this, you have to believe that the military will believe EVERYTHING they're told by one of their own, or protect them from the consequences even if they don't. The NSA and the ambassador are then blamed (okay, that's believeable if there was a change of government in between. They're political appointees, after all).

If this had been told RASHOMON style, without us seeing the videotape (or if the tape had been inconclusive), we could choose who to believe. Or if Jones's character had uncovered ANY evidence that supported the colonel's story or contradicted the official version, rather than making it a matter of faith. Instead, it's impossible to believe the film at all.

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18 out of 28 people found the following review useful:
Insight and Drama, 15 January 2003

Author: adogg4629 from LA, California

Headed by two unnerving performances, this film takes us on a journey through the gray area that is our military morality today. We live in a society insulated from realistic depictions of war. We get censored CNN and FOX news. We rarely get anything insightful, so it is a pleasure to have HOLLYWOOD offer up one of the most moving anti-military films in the past ten years. While the courtroom drama is by all means standard, the most unique attention is paid to the changing perception of TLJ's character. In his journy to defend, he comes to an all too real understanding of a culture whose leaders have no problem sending our boys to die, yet they themselves are either ignorant of the reality, or to politically motivated to be moved by it. In conclusion, this is an alienating film because it presents an alien culture that lives by its own moral code. That alien culture isn't middle eastern... it is our own military.

One more point; Watching this film post 911 gives it an all too creepy reality.

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25 out of 42 people found the following review useful:
Disengaged, 21 October 2001

Author: Critical Eye UK from Lake District, England

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

SPOILERS COMING UP: DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW IF YOU'RE INTENDING TO SEE THIS MOVIE

New to UK satellite television's Box Office pay-to-view channel, this movie comes with a cautionary warning from the channel that 'in view of recent events', viewers may find 'certain scenes upsetting'. Well yes. Almost all of 'em, in fact. But they're upsetting less on account of any contemporary resonance that might echo in the wake of 9/11 -- truth to tell, there isn't any such resonance, anyway -- and rather more because of the realisation that one has coughed up £3 25p in order to view a movie with so little idea of the rules of engagement where audiences are concerned that writer and director ought to get back (or possibly,enroll) in the nearest neighbourhood film school as soon as possible.

The plot is downright daft, the characterisation awful, and the script, dire. Jackson's military hero is self evidently anything but, and Jones's about-to-retire-in-two-weeks-lawyer straight from a cupboard in central casting (the shelf below the about-to-retire-in-two-weeks detective).

For Jones in particular, the about-to-retire bit is inadvertently cruel: in the preliminary 1968 flashback shot he already looks as though he was born with the century, his noble visage defeating all of Friedkin's technical wizardry -- i.e., getting the actor to wear an oversize hat to cover most of his face -- to assert otherwise.

When it isn't daft, it's risible: a couple of weeks after being machine-gunned and having one of her legs amputated, the six-year-old victim is out of hospital and miraculously adept with her crutches (whilst other victims of the same blood bath still lay in their hospital beds with the same bullet holes and blood stains).

An evil National Security Adviser (well yes, he would have to be evil, wouldn't he?) steals a video tape that wouldn't have excused Jackson's behaviour anyway, even though the film plainly thinks so.

Lawyer and hero have a Wayne/McGaglan-style fight after the lawyer realises how indefensible his client truly is, and then having rolled around smashing each other up and the studio set, bond together in macho male laughter. Appealing? Right. Nothing like having a laugh with a mass murderer to cement an audience's sympathy.

And so it goes on: incredbility piled on incredibility, the film with neither a moral core nor even a moral fix on its cardboard characters.

Someone, somewhere though, evidently thought audiences would be engaged by this dross and leave their brains behind: an excruciatingly awful end credit sequence actually has the temerity to chronicle the post-film fate of the movie's characters -- National Security adviser arrested, Ambassador arrested, military hero acquitted of all charges --as if for one moment anyone could ever believe them to approximate to real people.

Unfortunately, the only reality of Rules of Engagement is its utter awfulness. Amidst so much gunfire and blood letting, the loudest sound is of Friedkin shooting himself in the foot.

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29 out of 51 people found the following review useful:
Not as good as "A Few Good Men" but well worth watching, 14 November 2000

Author: loubob from Fort Worth, TX

This is a military court martial movie with a few similarities to A Few Good Men. It did not have as much suspense, but overall it was still quite good. I thought the situation in Yemen made it very applicable to current day problems in Arab-American relations. The movie was released before the USS Cole attack, which reinforces the possibility of the event in question in the court-martial. I don't think the massacre that occurred would have been quite so bloody in a real world situation though.

The performances of Tommy Lee Jones, Samuel L. Jackson and Guy Pearce were very good. Probably no Oscars here, but well worth watching.

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26 out of 46 people found the following review useful:
A Bit Contrived, But Very Entertaining, 17 November 2006

Author: ccthemovieman-1 from United States

This story gets the viewer involved with it right away never lets up, with good performances all around, although Tommy Lee Jones stands out a bit above the rest.

There are some outstanding action scenes in the first 30 minutes and if you have a 5.1surround system, it gets quite a workout. After that, the story settles down into a court battle.

Its politics are typical Hollywood: the government is corrupt with the main villain the National Security Adviser who burns a video tape that would clear a U.S. Marine colonel from being framed for murder. That colonel also is a black man which makes the story even more politically correct. Samuel J. Jackson plays that role, a Col. "Terrry Childers." Jones plays his attorney, "Col. Hayes Hodges." The two veteran actors play off each other very well.

It gets even more dramatic when two other witnesses lie and make justice look almost impossible to attain in the case. But, dramatics aside, it's a good story and certainly an entertaining one. Once again, William Friedkin has directed a good movie.

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8 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
flawed, 6 March 2006

Author: frankboccia from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

The first time I saw this movie, I loved it. But at a second viewing, I realized with dismay that there was a major discrepancy in it that invalidated the entire point of the film. Almost every movie has a goof or an inconsistency, and while that annoys me sometimes it usually doesn't take away from the overall value of the film: Silence of the Lambs, a great movie, has no fewer than four major inconsistent or contradictory moments in it. The problem with this movie is that the contradiction goes to the very essence of the movie's theme. Briefly, the plot goes thusly: Samuel Jackson is in charge of a unit of Marines which is sent to an unspecified US embassy to protect it from increasingly hostile mobs. At some point, the mob becomes violent and, more, begins attacking the embassy. Jackson spirits out the ambassador and his wife, along with other staff, and then defends the embassy. Finally, he gives the order to fire into the crowd that is stoning and shooting at the building, and the unit does so with devastating results. When the smoke clears, dozens lie dead and many more wounded, including many women and children, and not a weapon is in sight. The resulting furor and outrage leads to a court-martial for Jackson. The central thesis of the film is that Jackson and Jackson alone saw the weapons. For reasons which are explained but are not totally convincing, a State Department employee destroys the surveillance tape from the embassy which clearly shows the weapons being fired by the mob. The rest of the movie describes how Jackson is defended by Tommy Lee Jones, who undertakes his own investigation.

This whole thesis falls apart, however, when you watch the scene where the Marines begin firing into the crowd. There are two impossibilities here that Friedkin (the director) asks us to swallow: 1, that an entire platoon of Marines --roughly thirty men-- rise up over the wall, aim their weapons and fire for ten to fifteen seconds --and not a single one of them sees a weapon. Impossible. Even less possible: 2, after the firing stops, all the weapons that were in the crowd (and shown on the surveillance tape) disappear --just like that! Where did they go? Thirty marines are standing on a rooftop not fifty feet away from the square, looking down at it, and all those weapons are taken away without them (or the tape) seeing it. Absolutely impossible.

If this were a minor (or even major) discrepancy, but had no relation to the rest of the action, then I wouldn't even comment on it. But the entire movie rests on the idea that only Jackson saw what he did --and that is a flat impossibility. For me, that ruined what would have otherwise been a fine film. That is very poor writing. Too bad.

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11 out of 18 people found the following review useful:
Break these Rules, 7 January 2001

Author: The Phan from North Carolina

What a mess. Sleepwalking performances by two otherwise very fine actors (Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson), impossible plot holes, the use of every military and courtroom cliche imaginable, an awful script, and a continual need to suspend the viewer's disbelief. It's hard to believe such a good cast (including Guy Pearce, Ben Kingsley, Bruce Greenwood, Ann Archer) give performances that are either sad or so brief you wonder if they left much of this film on the cutting room floor. Not that it would have mattered--very little could have saved this disaster.

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4 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
Despite a Classy Cast, Not Much Doing, 16 October 2000

Author: Daniel J. Fienberg from Los Angeles, CA

Rules of Engagement fits comfortably into that genre of military film in which the motivations inherant in the human character are subverted for the motivates of the The United States Marines. Assinine personal decisions can just be tossed off as being part of The Code. Unlike A Few Good Men, still the best of its kind, Rules of Engagement falls flat because even as none of the character actions make sense, nothing is surprising either, and that is the biggest sin of all.

This is all unfortunate, since Rules of Engagement was made by a lot of people who should know better. Or who at least once knew better. The recent rerelease of The Exorcist and a repeat viewing of The French Connection contrasted with this film can only lead viewer to a simple conclusion: At one point William Friedkin was a master of his craft, knowing how to tell a compelling story with a unique visual style. He can't do that anymore. It's shocking just how dull the early scenes in Vietnam and Yemen feel. There's no tension and at a certain point you just want the characters to move on. Friedkin isn't helped by the fact that usually reliable cinematographer William Fraker (a five-time Oscar nominee) has given the film a murky look, often mislighting actors, unless the purpose was to make everybody look bruised.

When all is said and done, only Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson are given fully developed characters. Even though they're often forced to say stupid things (Out of nowhere Jackson has an overly expositional insult about Jones's alcoholism, a problem that hadn't been mentioned previously and was never relevant afterwards), these actors are always reliable. The film's other interesting performance come from Guy Pearce, whose American accent is frequently preposterous, but unlike LA Confidential (where Pearce gave a fuller overall performance), the accent remains mostly consistant throughout.

The film's other actors are stranded without resolutions for their characters. Ben Kingsley and Anne Archer, as the weak Yemeni ambassador and his wife, are left stranded. Ditto Bruce Greenwood (so consistantly excellent as wounded heroes in Atom Egoyan films, and so badly wasted as one dimensional heavies in American movies), whose narrative arc involving a videotape is woefully without payoff.

In the end, Rules of the Game offers nothing new, and nothing surprising. The solid acting by the leads fits into this rubric of normality, but as does the absolute apathy the film produces.

I give it a 4/10.

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2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Better than 6.3 currently given, 15 August 2011
Author: IClaudius7 from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Although this has been called "contrived" the factual basis, is not only possible, it is probable given all the deployments of our military personnel for the time frame depicted. Moreover, this piece of trivia would go against that assessment:

"James Webb provided the story for the film, based partly on his own military experience in Vietnam and his tenure as the Secretary of the Navy under President Ronald Reagan; in 2006, Webb was elected as Virginia's newest U.S. Senator."

I am not sure why it was given a "bad rap", but the courtroom scenes, especially with the prosecutor Guy Pearce, are some of the best I have seen depicted of a general court martial (I am an ex-JAG from the Navy). Moreover, the GCM result is also probable.

The NSA who hides evidence is VERY believable. Loved the flick - it's now a guilty pleasure. I recommend it as capturing a scenario which could happen in at embassy in a Muslim country.

As for production and direction, William Friedkin is a more than able director having won an Oscar for "The French Connection" and being nominated for another in "The Exorcist". The cast includes notables Oscar winner Ben Kingsley, Oscar nominated Anne Archer, and the ubiquitous warrior Dale Dye to go along with Oscar winner Tommy Lee Jones and Oscar nominated Samuel L. Jackson. All in all, it was given "short shrift" perhaps because of politics. The story was more than exciting for the purpose.

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