Rules of Engagement

Written by: Stephen Gaghan (story by James Webb) Starring: Tommy Lee Jones, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Kingsley, Blair Underwood, Bruce Greenwood, Anne Archer, Guy Pearce

Despite energetic direction by William Friedkin, and completely convincing performances by Jones and Jackson, “Rules off Engagement” falls short because of the oldest flaw in the book: script trouble. But more on that later. An opening sequence shows us buddies Hayes Hodges (Jones) and Terry Childers (Jackson) in Vietnam in 1968. There is a ferocious firefight, during which Hodges is wounded, but Childers saves him. Flash forward about 30 years: Hodges is a colonel and a military lawyer. Childers is a colonel but still a combat soldier, in fact, he is sent on a mission to protect our embassy in Yemen (since when did Yemen become a hot spot for the U.S.?) But things go awry, Childers’ men must shoot, and he finds himself on trial for his life. For reasons that are bravely if not logically put, he seeks out his old buddy Hodges to defend him. Hodges, in the movie’s one memorable line, tells his pal, “I’m a good enough lawyer to know you need a better lawyer than me,” but of course he takes the case anyway.

What follows is Hodge’s rather fruitless investigation into the incident, and then the trial itself, in which Hodges is matched up against hotshot prosecutor Major Biggs (a very strong Guy Pearce). I feel rather churlish criticizing this picture, since it is so well intentioned, embodies the highest ideals of the American military, and has such high production values. But in a few crucial respects, it is lame brained. According to the premise of the picture, when events turn ugly at the embassy, and Childers must give the order to fire, he is the only one who sees that the crowd has weapons. That is silly enough in its own right, since there are about fifty U.S. soldiers on the roof, all looking basically in the same direction. And it is not just one lone gunman we are talking about; in the flashbacks of the engagement, it looks like ten or twenty people in the crowd start firing pistols and machine guns at the Americans, and that includes men, women, and children! The movie seems to claim that all of the U.S. soldiers start firing at the crowd without ever looking where they are shooting. Calling this implausible is being generous, even given what I am sure is the terrible chaos of battle.

American bureaucrats fare no better than logic. First, the U.S. ambassador to Yemen, Mourain (Kingsley), goes from being a grateful, if lily-livered, functionary to a venal turncoat, who betrays Childers on the stand, because... because... well, that’s not entirely clear. This turn of events was obviously written just to fit the plot, and it is totally unconvincing. Still, Mourain is a gallant knight compared to Assistant Secretary of State Sokol (Greenwood), who must have been a Yemeni mole. Here is a high-ranking officer in the State Department, the movie posits, who receives proof that Childers and his men acted appropriately during the fight. So, what does he do? Does he run to the White House to tell the President the good news? No. Does he call up the Washington Post and Barbara Walters, shouting to the rafters that yes, damn it, we are good, we are just, we did the right thing? No. Instead, he takes the crucial videotape and burns it in his fireplace, justifying it with mealy mouthed piffle about not “blaming the United States,” or some such nonsense. Only someone bent on the downfall of the U.S. government would pull a stunt like that. If the filmmakers really wanted to make movie about a traitor in the State Department, they picked the wrong story.

Lastly, it must be said that, given the premises described above, Hodges should not have won this trial. In fact, by the evidence that is presented, he got beaten pretty badly, and the jury should have returned a verdict of guilty. Hodges delivers some nice sentiments and stands up for the old fashioned values of duty and honor, but in the end, all the evidence favored the prosecution. It seems that the jury exonerated Childers because they believed that he was a good soldier and a good American, who deserved a break. I kept waiting for the last-minute evidence to surface and reveal the truth, but it never did. That would have been formulaic, but at least it would have made sense. Instead, we are left with a text crawl at the end of the picture telling us that all the bad guys were punished. What? How? Why? It is unfortunate that the movie has to contend with these crippling script flaws, because in many other ways it's a good film. I am more than willing to believe that American soldiers are the world’s finest, so good, in fact, that they don’t need the kind of sympathy vote the jury in this film delivers. Sad to say, but “Rules of Engagement” serves up the kind of whitewash that not even its most evil diplomats could have dreamed up.