| Rules of Engagement | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| 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 |
| 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 Marine Colonel Terry Childers, who is brought to court-martial on charges of disobeying the rules of engagement in a military incident at an American embassy in Sana'a, Yemen, resulting in the slaughter of many civilians by Childers' men.
Screenwriter James Webb is a former Marine combat officer, lawyer and Secretary of the Navy. Webb is currently the senior United States Senator from Virginia.
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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 an NVA officer into calling off an ambush of American marines, thereby saving the life of Lt. Hays Hodges (Tommy Lee Jones).
The movie jumps to 1996; Childers and his Marine Expeditionary Unit are called to evacuate the United States 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 several Marines are killed by the Yemeni snipers on nearby rooftops. Childers, after appearing to see something in the crowd below, orders his men to open fire on the crowd below and "waste the motherfuckers", resulting in the death of 83 civilian protesters and injuries to over 100 more.
Back in the United States, the National Security Adviser 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 JAG 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 the National Security Advisor, Bill Sokal, is determined for him to be convicted, and at one point burns a tape showing that the crowd had indeed been in possession of weapons, justifying Childers' actions. He also blackmails the ambassador Childers rescued, Ambassador Mourain, 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, Hodges is able to present 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. Also, when the prosecution presents the Vietnamese Colonel, Colonel Cao, who witnessed Childers execute a POW in Vietnam, as a rebuttal witness, Hodges gets him to mention that, had the circumstances been reversed, he would've done the same thing.
The film ends with Childers being found guilty of the minor charge of breach of the peace, but not guilty of the more serious charges of conduct unbecoming of an officer and murder, and a final titlecard reveals that no further charges were brought against him, and he retired honorably from the Marines. Sokal is found guilty of spoliation of evidence and forced to resign, while Mourain is found guilty of perjury.
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."[1] 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.[2]
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee described it as "probably the most racist film ever made against Arabs by Hollywood".[3]
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