Rules of Engagement

But the single most compelling performance may belong to Australian actor Guy Pearce. more

The drama ultimately retreats to safer, duller, more illogical, and more reactionary impulses and stereotypes. more

Worth it, though, for the conviction and ramrod-erect bearing that pros Jackson and Jones bring to their roles. more

Friedkin turns on the juice and Jones and Jackson let it rip.

Works splendidly as a courtroom thriller about military values as long as you don't expect it to seriously consider those values. more

As mechanical and predictable as a cuckoo clock, it shouldn't work half as well as it does. more

The setup doesn't make sense from the get-go. more

Jones even manages to save this somewhat tiring film. more

Friedkin does a superb job of serving up the well-appointed script by James Webb and Stephen Gaghan. more

Written with such murderous gravity, certainty and gloomy solemnity - such an absence of real life or feeling - that it tends to kill our interest. more

Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson are excellent as usual in their roles: two old friends from Vietnam whose careers took different courses after a firefight that badly injured Jones. Jackson's Marines rescue a cowardly ambassador and his family from an embassy pelted with rocks, insults and the occasional sniper's bullet. In return for this service, the ambassador will testify that Jackson lost control and opened fire on a crowd full of unarmed civilians, because his superior at the Department of State thinks he should to save the American reputation in the Middle East. The basic story... more

I enjoyed this movie a lot and I think that it is underrated. Samuel L. Jackson is Marine Colonel Terry Childers and Tommy Lee Jones is the lawyer who must defend him. The movie begins in some nameless jungle in Vietnam where Childers and Jones are soldiers fighting Charlie. A huge gun battle ensues and Jones's group is massacred. But Childers convinces the VC leader to call off the attack by killing his radio operator. Then we are taken to the present day, to San'aa, Yemen, where Childers is forced to get the ambassador out. His marines are being shot at, he thinks by the crowd, and so he... more

Having served in the Marine Corps, I am a sucker for all things Marine. I am also a fan of both Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson, but then again who isnt? These two powerhouse performers team up for one good movie. Jackson plays Terry Childers who is a 30 year combat veteran colonel in the Marine Corps. Childers is sent into Yemen to rescue an Ambassador (Ben Kingsley) and his family. The mission gets quite hairy and terrorists and civilians both are caught in the firestorm to follow. The incident in seen as an embarassment at best and a political nightmare at worst by the folks in... more