Rules of Engagement (film)

Rules of Engagement
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	William Friedkin
Produced by	Scott Rudin Richard D. Zanuck
Screenplay by	Stephen Gaghan
Story by	James Webb
Starring	Tommy Lee Jones Samuel L. Jackson
Music by	Mark Isham
Cinematography	William A. Fraker Nicola Pecorini
Editing by	Augie Hess
Studio	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	April 7, 2000 (2000-04-07)
Running time	128 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$60 million
Box office	$71.2 million (worldwide)

Rules of Engagement is a 2000 American film directed by William Friedkin and starring Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson. Jackson plays U.S. Marine Colonel Terry Childers, who is brought to court-martial after men under Childers' orders kill a large number of civilians outside the U.S. embassy in Yemen.

James Webb, to whom the story is credited, is a former U.S. Marine combat officer, lawyer and U.S. Secretary of the Navy. Webb later served as a U.S. Senator from Virginia.

Plot

The film opens with Operation Kingfisher, a disastrous American advance in the Vietnam War, and shows Lt. Terry Childers (Samuel L. Jackson) execute an unarmed prisoner to intimidate a Vietnam People's Army officer into calling off an ambush of U.S. Marines, thereby saving the life of Lt. Hays Hodges (Tommy Lee Jones).

The movie jumps to 1996; Col. Childers and his Marine Expeditionary Unit are called to evacuate the U.S. Ambassador to Yemen from the embassy grounds, after a routine demonstration against American influence in the Persian Gulf turns into rock-throwing and sporadic fire from nearby rooftops. After escorting the ambassador to a waiting helicopter, Childers returns to the embassy to retrieve the American flag; meanwhile three Marines are killed by snipers on nearby rooftops. Childers, after appearing to see firing from crowd below, orders his men to open fire on the crowd and "waste the motherfuckers", resulting in the deaths of 83 civilian protesters and injuries to over 100 more.

Back in the States, the U.S. National Security Advisor, Bill Sokal (Bruce Greenwood), decides to proceed with a court-martial to try to deflect negative public opinion about the United States, shouldering all the blame for the incident onto Childers, and salvage American relations in the Persian Gulf. Childers finds Hodges, whose life he saved, is now serving in the U.S. Marine Corps Judge Advocate Division and asks him to be his defense attorney at the upcoming tribunal. Hodges is reluctant to accept, knowing that his record is less than impressive, and Childers needs a better lawyer. But Childers is adamant, because he would rather have an attorney who has served in combat before.

Most of the evidence is stacked against Childers, especially because Sokal is determined for him to be convicted and, at one point, burns a videotape of security camera footage showing that the many islamic fundamentalists had used the crowd as cover; thus supporting Childers' claims. He also blackmails the ambassador Childers rescued, Ambassador Mourain (Ben Kingsley), into lying on the stand and saying both that the crowd had been peaceful and that Childers had been violent towards him and his family during the evacuation. However, at the trial, Hodges presents a shipping manifest proving that a tape from an undamaged camera which had been looking directly into the crowd—the tape Sokal had burned—has been delivered to Sokal's office, but has failed to show up at the trial, arguing that this tape would have been damning evidence against Childers if it had, in fact, shown the crowd was unarmed. Also, when the prosecution presents the Vietnamese colonel who witnessed Childers execute a POW in Vietnam, Col. Cao, as a rebuttal witness (arguably a violation of Rule 404 of the Rules of Evidence concerning character evidence, which prohibits the prosecution from presenting evidence of a defendant's character trait to show that the defendant acted in conformity with that trait except when the defense has already presented evidence of that character trait; Rule 404 is applicable to military courts), Hodges cross-examines him and gets him to testify that, had the circumstances been reversed, he would have done the same thing.

The film ends with Childers being found guilty of the minor charge of breach of the peace (for having disobeyed his order to just show his Marines' presence), but not guilty of the more serious charges of conduct unbecoming of an officer and murder. A final titlecard reveals that no further charges were brought against him, and that he retired honorably from the Marines. Sokal is found guilty of spoliation of evidence and forced to resign, while Mourain is charged with perjury.

Cast

• Tommy Lee Jones as Col. Hayes Lawrence "Hodge" Hodges II
• Samuel L. Jackson as Col. Terry L. Childers
• Guy Pearce as Maj. Mark Biggs
• Ben Kingsley as Ambassador Mourain
• Bruce Greenwood as U.S. National Security Advisor Bill Sokal
• Anne Archer as Mrs. Mourain
• Blair Underwood as Capt. Lee
• Philip Baker Hall as Gen. Hayes Lawrence Hodges, Ret.
• Dale Dye as Maj. Gen. Perry
• Mark Feuerstein as Tom Chandler
• Richard McGonagle as Judge Col. E. Warner
• Baoan Coleman as Col. Binh Le Cao
• Nicky Katt as Hayes Lawrence Hodges III
• Ryan Hurst as Capt. Hustings
• Gordon Clapp as Harris

Critical reception

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 37% based on reviews from 93 critics and reports a rating average of 5 out of 10. It reported the overall consensus, "The script is unconvincing and the courtroom action is unengaging." At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 45 based on 31 reviews.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee described it as "probably the most racist film ever made against Arabs by Hollywood". Director William Friedkin, however, dismissed accusations that the film was racist: "Let me state right up front, the film is not anti-Arab, is not anti-Moslem and is certainly not anti-Yemen. In order to make the film in Morocco, the present King of Morocco had to read the script and approve it and sign his name ... and nobody participating from the Arab side of things felt that the film was anti-Arab. The film is anti-terrorist. It takes a strong stand against terrorism and it says that terrorism wears many faces ... but we haven’t made this film to slander the government of Yemen. It's a democracy and I don’t believe for a moment they support terrorists any more than America does."

See also

• Trial movies

Further reading

• Clagett, Thomas D. (2003). "12 Angry Men and Rules of Engagement". William Friedkin: Films of Aberration, Obsession and Reality. Silman-James Press. pp. 363–386. ISBN 978-1-879505-61-2. 
• Semmerling, Tim Jon (2006). "Attack from the Multicultural Front (2000): Rules of Engagement". 'Evil' Arabs in American Popular Film: Orientalist Fear. University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0-292-71342-0. 

External links

• Rules of Engagement at the Internet Movie Database
• Rules of Engagement (film) at AllRovi
• Rules of Engagement (film) at the TCM Movie Database
• Rules of Engagement at Box Office Mojo
  • http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/arabic/news/newsid_726000/726498.stm