Rules of Engagement (film)
| Rules of Engagement | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | William Friedkin |
| Screenplay by | Stephen Gaghan |
| Story by | James Webb |
| Produced by | Scott Rudin Richard D. Zanuck |
| Starring | Samuel L. Jackson Tommy Lee Jones |
| Cinematography | William A. Fraker Nicola Pecorini |
| Edited by | Augie Hess |
| Music by | Mark Isham |
Production company | |
Release date |
|
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.
The movie is entirely fictional, even so especially the end looks like it would be based on a real case.
Plot
 | This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. (February 2011) |
The film opens in the Vietnam War in 1968, specifically near Ca Lu. A US Marine platoon, led by Lieutenant Hays Hodges (Tommy Lee Jones) and Lieutenant Terry Childers (Samuel L. Jackson) are advancing through the jungle and they split up to take two different routes. However, Hodges' group is ambushed by North Vietnamese soldiers and all but Hodges are killed. At the same time, Childers' group captures the leader of the attackers, Colonel Binh Le Cao. Childers orders Colonel Cao to call his men off Hodges and advance. To try and intimidate him, Childers holds a pistol to Cao's unarmed radioman, promising to let them both go free if they cooperate. When Cao refuses to call his men off, Childers executes the radioman and turns the gun on Cao, who immediately radios his men and tells them to advance, leaving Hodges alive. Childers then keeps his word and lets Colonel Cao go.
The movie then jumps to 28 years later (1996), where Hodges, now a Colonel and a veteran, although he has been confined to a desk job for the last 28 years due to an injury picked up in Vietnam, is holding a retirement party. As a surprise, the now-Colonel Terry Childers shows up to present Colonel Hodges with a sword of honor. Not long after this, Childers and his platoon are called into action in Yemen, where an unruly crowd of local men, women and children demonstrate outside the U.S. embassy in Sana'a which had been incited by jihad audio tapes and the U.S. Ambassador Mourain, his wife and young son need to be evacuated. During the evacuation, 3 Marines are killed by gunmen on the roofs of the buildings overlooking the embassy. After retrieving the U.S. flag and flying Mourain and his family out of the Embassy, Childers returns to aid his marines. A fourth Marine, Sergeant Kresovitch is mortally wounded and dies in Childers' arms. Childers, while peering around his cover, appears to see something in the crowd below. He immediately orders his men to open fire on the crowd, killing 83 men, women and children.
In the wake of this, the National Security Adviser is worried by the dire consequences that are caused by Childers' actions and decide that he needs to be court-martialed. The legal case that follows depends on whether the crowd was armed and fired first or Colonel Childers exceeded his orders and reacted based on anger, confusion or a darker motive (such as prejudice). According to U.S. military law as explained in the film, Childers could be charged with three offenses: murder for killing 83 "non-combatants" (a crime eligible for life imprisonment or even the death penalty), as well as Conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman (eligible for a Dishonorable Discharge) and a minor charge of Breach of the Peace. But if some of them were carrying weapons and opened fire, he could be exonerated. Childers asks Colonel Hays Hodges to be his attorney, against Hodges' advice that he get another lawyer, as he had had an unimpressive career in the Marine Corps's JAG Division. However, Childers is adamant that Hodges be his attorney rather than a better and more successful one for the principal reason that Hodges has served in combat before, knowing that many other great lawyers have not. Hodges agrees and goes to Yemen, where he finds several audio tapes, which call for a jihad against the USA. This explains the mob outside the embassy and the shooting. Horrified by what he sees, he confronts Childers and eventually admits that they have a tough case and are unlikely to win.
The prosecution asserts that Childers' order to fire was based on personal fear, racism, or confusion. The National Security Advisor, William "Bill" Sokal, wants Childers to be convicted in order to preserve U.S. relations with Arab countries; when he receives a CCTV security videotape that confirms that shots had indeed been fired by the crowd, he burns the tape with the hope that the prosecution will win. The defense and Childers respond that he was in fear for his Marines' lives under fire and was in compliance with his orders and the rules of engagement. Childers testifies that he was on the roof and could clearly see that the crowd had weapons; Sergeant Kresovitch – who also had an observational position – was killed on site and therefore, Childers is the only one who can testify as to the intentions of the crowd. Ambassador Mourain (earlier blackmailed into co-operating by Sokal) lies on the stand and says the crowd was peacefully demonstrating and that Childers had acted violently towards him during the evacuation; his wife later admits the truth to Hodges but won't testify in contradiction to her husband. The prosecution introduces previous actions by then-Lieutenant Childers in Vietnam to show a history of misconduct, including a witness – Colonel Binh Le Cao, the very man Childers had captured and released in Vietnam.
During the testimony of Colonel Cao, he recounts how Childers had threatened him with death in order to save his Marines, and executed his unarmed radioman. Nevertheless, the foreign officer admits that, if placed in the same situation, he would have done the same thing. Hodges also presents the jury with a shipping manifest showing that a camera film from an undamaged camera that had exactly the same point of view as Childers, which could have exonerated Childers, had been delivered to Sokal's office, but has not shown up. This refutes all of the prosecution's claims that the tapes had been stolen, or did not exist, and appears to be a potential turning point in the trial. Similarly, Hodges plays the audiotapes calling for a jihad against America and a witness's testimony proving that these were what caused the protest, and not the protest over US placement of ships in the Gulf of Aden, as the prosecution had originally claimed. Ultimately, Colonel Childers is found guilty of the minor charge of Breach of the Peace, but not guilty of the more serious charges of Conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman and murder. In an effort to save face, the attorney of the prosecution, Major Mark Biggs, tries to get Hodges to recount what he remembered about the incident in Vietnam to pursue this against Childers. However, Hodges responds by reminding the Major of his lack of experience in combat and that the average life expectancy of a marine dropped into a hot LZ was not two weeks, as Biggs had thought, but rather "16 minutes". As Childers steps outside the courthouse, Colonel Cao, before getting in to a car, salutes him, and Childers salutes back. A postscript title card says that William Sokal was charged and found guilty of destruction of evidence, forcing him to resign from his post; that Ambassador Mourain was found guilty of perjury and sacked; and that no further charges were pursued against Childers and he retired honorably from the Marines.
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 US 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
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."[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] Paul Clinton of the Boston Globe wrote, "At its worst, it's blatantly racist, using Arabs as cartoon-cutout bad guys."[citation needed]
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee described it as "probably the most racist film ever made against Arabs by Hollywood".[3]
References
- ^ "Rules of Engagement Movie Reviews". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved February 17, 2011.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ "Rules of Engagement". Metacritic. Retrieved February 17, 2011.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ Whitaker, Brian. The 'towel-heads' take on Hollywood, The Guardian. Friday August 11, 2000.
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.