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Movie Review: 'Rules of Engagement' Friedkin captures a Marine action gone awry in 'Rules of Engagement' Friday, April 07, 2000 By Ron Weiskind, Post-Gazette Movie Editor
Ambiguity is both the strength and the weakness of the vivid military courtroom drama "Rules of Engagement," a movie that ultimately leaves no doubt where its heart lies.
Marine Col. Terry Childers (Samuel L. Jackson), assigned to protect the American embassy in Yemen from an unruly crowd of demonstrators, finds his squad under fire from snipers. After some of his men are killed, he orders his troops to shoot back. They fire into the crowd, killing more than 80 people, many of them women and children.
With headlines blaring from newspapers throughout the world and the Middle East rising in outrage, National Security Adviser William Sokal (Bruce Greenwood) hopes to defuse the situation by making sure Childers is swiftly brought up on charges in a court-martial, demonstrating America's resolve to do the right thing.
But just what is the right thing? No one exactly covers himself in glory as the film proceeds, and that ambiguity keeps us intrigued. Childers is a hothead capable of erupting under pressure, especially in combat. One character lies about what happened, another suppresses crucial evidence, still another tries to stonewall.
Director William Friedkin shows us the demonstration and subsequent massacre in detail. We've seen what happened. Or have we? "Rules of Engagement" maneuvers around its inconsistencies and moments of illogic like soldiers trying to trap the enemy. When it's over, though, the movie almost does itself in with its own guile, like American officials in Vietnam boasting about inflated body counts. When we find out the real story, we may feel manipulated.
Take that suppressed evidence, for example. Why in the hell was it kept under wraps? It could prove only one of two things. Either would serve the purpose of the person concealing it.
James Webb, the former Secretary of the Navy who conceived the story and is credited as an executive producer, is reported to have complained about changes that, in his view, weakened the film's authenticity. Supposedly, he was mollified. But maybe he was right.
The screenwriter, Stephen Gaghan, comes from television. The film's technical adviser, Dale Dye, is an ex-Marine who has worked in that capacity on many movies, including "Platoon," "Forrest Gump" and "Saving Private Ryan."
Director Friedkin, commander of the filmmaking troops, could be found liable for merely doing his job -- showing us what he wants us to see, when he wants us to see it. But you've got to say this for him: The man who gave us "The French Connection" and "The Exorcist" still knows how to grab your attention. The action scenes move crisply, building to the crescendo of the bloody massacre, which catches us breathless and horrified, changing the film's tone in an instant.
The courtroom scenes offer brisk exchanges between Major Biggs (Guy Pearce), the no-nonsense prosecutor, and Col. Hays Hodges (Tommy Lee Jones), the defense attorney. Childers saved his life in Vietnam, but Hodges is somewhat disappointed by his career. After the war, he became an attorney and, by his own admission, far from the best. He doubts himself and he has far too many doubts about his client. Yet in the end, he tells the court, he took the case because Terry told him what he did was proper and that was good enough for him.
Looking abashed for much of the film, Jones finally gets to watch someone else overact for once in those scenes where Jackson goes into high dudgeon. It's a pleasure on both counts -- except when these two old soldiers get into a drunken brawl with each other.
Friedkin draws a contrast between the lush, violent chaos of the Vietnam scenes and a moment in the present when, after Hodges' retirement party, he walks with Childers through a forest of bare tree trunks, symbolizing a warrior entering the barren winter of his life.
"Rules of Engagement" displays so many intriguing flaws in its characters that I was disappointed that it offers such a pat and not altogether unexpected ending.
On the other hand, where else could it go? The final scene offers a salute between two battle-tested soldiers. Men who have been in combat are a breed apart, it says. The club transcends all other boundaries. The rest of us cannot understand.
If not exactly a mea culpa for My Lai, "Rules of Engagement" certainly attempts to demonstrate that, for men under fire, the title phrase can qualify as an oxymoron.
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RATING: R for language and scenes of war violence