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Rules of Engagement
Metascore
45 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 31 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 31
  2. Mixed: 14 out of 31
  3. Negative: 10 out of 31
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  1. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Bob Graham
    75
    But the single most compelling performance may belong to Australian actor Guy Pearce.
  2. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    75
    The drama ultimately retreats to safer, duller, more illogical, and more reactionary impulses and stereotypes.
  3. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: John Patterson
    70
    Worth it, though, for the conviction and ramrod-erect bearing that pros Jackson and Jones bring to their roles.
  4. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    70
    Friedkin turns on the juice and Jones and Jackson let it rip.
    All this critic's reviews
  5. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    63
    Works splendidly as a courtroom thriller about military values as long as you don't expect it to seriously consider those values.
  6. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Foreman
    63
    As mechanical and predictable as a cuckoo clock, it shouldn't work half as well as it does.
  7. Charlotte Observer
    Reviewed by: Lawrence Toppman
    63
    The setup doesn't make sense from the get-go.
  8. Newsweek
    Reviewed by: Ted Gideonse
    60
    Jones even manages to save this somewhat tiring film.
  9. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Rosenbaum
    60
    Friedkin does a superb job of serving up the well-appointed script by James Webb and Stephen Gaghan.
  10. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Wilmington
    50
    Written with such murderous gravity, certainty and gloomy solemnity - such an absence of real life or feeling - that it tends to kill our interest.
  11. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Rene Rodriguez
    50
    It's bottom-feeder entertainment wrapped up in high-minded airs.
  12. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jack Mathews
    50
    Sometimes, movies would work better if you couldn't see them.
  13. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Mike Clark
    50
    The sentiments here are thoroughly semper fi, but the result occasionally works at cross-purposes.
  14. Baltimore Sun
    Reviewed by: Chris Kaltenbach
    50
    This military courtroom drama is full of questions, but woefully short of answers.
  15. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Maitland McDonagh
    50
    It's a deftly executed crowd-pleaser, but it's dishonest to the core.
  16. Film.com
    Reviewed by: John Hartl
    50
    What rescues the movie, time and again, is the strength of Jones' and Jackson's performances.
  17. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kenneth Turan
    50
    Passable, moderately diverting dramatic entertainment.
  18. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: A.O. Scott
    50
    There's not much going on here, and there is little suspense.
  19. Variety
    Reviewed by: Todd McCarthy
    50
    A broad and obvious approach to ambiguous material that's virtually all plot mechanics with little nuance or characterization.
  20. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marjorie Baumgarten
    40
    It's amazing the filmmakers never really concern themselves with satisfying the audience's rules of engagement.
  21. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Desson Thomson
    40
    It is the verdict of this court that it be led to a stockade reserved exclusively for cheap, pandering movies and duly shot.
  22. Mr. Showbiz
    Reviewed by: Richard T. Jameson
    38
    Pearce is shot in such distorting closeups that he looks like an overdeveloped athlete who's been getting steroid injections in his cheeks.
  23. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Carrie Rickey
    38
    A casualty of its own clumsy storytelling.
  24. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Jay Carr
    38
    Strenuously as it tries, and pulse-poundingly successful as the embassy rescue scene is, Rules of Engagement never engages us.
  25. TNT RoughCut
    Reviewed by: Susannah Breslin
    35
    Formulaic and pretty darn plodding.
    All this critic's reviews
  26. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Barry Johnson
    33
    Plays like an episode of "JAG," the naval courtroom TV series. A L-O-N-G episode.
  27. Film.com
    Reviewed by: Peter Brunette
    30
    It just doesn't work. Worse, it's downright offensive.
  28. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: David Sterritt
    25
    Spoiled by its simplistic portrait of people from the Mideast as incorrigibly violent and untrustworthy.
  29. San Francisco Examiner
    Reviewed by: Wesley Morris
    25
    A wildly dull, predictable script whose holes seem to be courtesy of random sniper fire.
  30. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: William Arnold
    25
    By the time the film plummets to its rock bottom, we find ourselves in a flag-waving no-brainer of the first order, and one of the most thoroughly confused morality tales in recent memory.
  31. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Michael Atkinson
    10
    The clichés lap like bay waves, from the salutes to the brotherly brawl to the olive-oil tear streaks semipermanently painted down Jackson's cheeks.
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