Rules of Engagement (2000)
reviewed by
Jon Popick

PLANET SICK-BOY: http://www.sick-boy.com
"We Put the SIN in Cinema"
I always get directors William Friedkin (The Exorcist) and John
Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate) mixed up.  They were both at
the top of their game a few decades ago and spent most of the  ‘90s
making first-rate but widely ignored television movies like 12 Angry Men
and George Wallace.  Friedkin helmed The French Connection and
Frankenheimer directed its sequel.  And six weeks after Frankenheimer’s
mildly entertaining, big-budget bust Reindeer Games opened, Friedkin’s
latest feature film hits the big screen.  And darned if Rules of
Engagement isn't a mildly entertaining, big-budget bust as well.
Rules begins in 1968 Viet Nam, where young Marines Hayes Hodges (Tommy
Lee Jones, Double Jeopardy) and Terry L. Childers (Samuel L. Jackson,
Deep Blue  Sea) slink through a booby-trapped jungle.  You may be
wondering how fifty-three-year-old Jones and fifty-one-year-old Jackson
were able to pull off young soldiers.  They don’t – Jackson wears a
kerchief on his head, while Jones has a floppy hat pulled down over his
face and blood smeared over the giant cracks in it like crimson
spackle.  They could have dug up some younger look-a-likes.   Anyway,
Hodges takes one in the knee and Childers saves his life.  The scene is
filled with mud, water, bullets, red mist, gruesome wounds, and some
very Saving Private Ryan-esque camera work, editing and film speed.
Flash to 1996, where Hodges is retiring from the Corps and Childers has
just received orders to head up a special ops unit.  While he and his
men are aboard the U.S.S. Wake Island in the Indian Ocean, Childers gets
an assignment to rescue the U.S. Ambassador to Yemen (Ben Kingsley, What
Planet Are You From?) and his family from the embassy, which is
currently surrounded by hundreds of demonstrators that are growing more
and more violent.  Childers and his crew fly three choppers to the
embassy and rescue the Americans, despite drawing heavy fire from
snipers on the roofs of nearby buildings.
When several of his men are killed in action, Childers orders his troops
to open fire into the crowd of demonstrators, instead of just going
after the snipers.  Eighty-three die and over a hundred more are
seriously injured, including dozens of unarmed women and children.  The
worldwide public outcry in the aftermath of this shooting is too
deafening for the U.S. to ignore.  They need a scapegoat, immediately
labeling Childers as “a hotheaded miscalculation,” and subject the Major
to a court martial eight days later where he is charged with murder and
other assorted atrocities.
The film is really quite good through this point, at which Childers
hires Hodges to represent him, playing the “Gee, I did save your life”
card.  Rules then becomes a run-of-the-mill courtroom bore with one of
the most anti-climatic ending in recent memory.  Much of Childers' case
revolves around a missing videotape of the incident captured on an
embassy security camera that proves the demonstrators were firing on the
Marines, not just the snipers.  In real life, they would have determined
the origin of the gunfire from the holes in the front of the embassy,
but the promise of detailed forensic analysis doesn't usually bring 'em
out opening weekend.
There are a couple of bright spots in Rules, like some pretty nifty
shots shown through the eyes of the sniper during the embassy siege, and
a blistering, applause-inducing exchange on the stand between Childers
and prosecutor Major Mark Biggs (Guy Pearce, Ravenous), who sports a
wicked New Yawk accent (he’s Australian).  There are no opening credits,
and the scenes set in Yemen (it’s actually Morocco) look quite lovely.
Another interesting aspect to Rules is that there really aren’t any bad
guys.  Biggs is just doing his job (he refuses to seek the death penalty
for Childers), and the National Security Advisor (Bruce Greenwood, Here
on Earth) and the Ambassador are only after Childers to protect the
interests of the country.
Rules was written by Stephen Gaghan (his first movie script), an
executive story editor on The Practice.  The film co-stars Anne Archer
(Clear & Present Danger), Blair Underwood (television’s
soon-to-be-cancelled City of Angels), Philip Baker Hall (Magnolia) and
Nicky Katt (Boiler Room).
1:58 - R for graphic violence and adult language