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Rules of Engagement
Paramount Pictures
MPAA RATING: R for scenes of war violence, and for language
Starring
Tommy Lee Jones,
Samuel L. Jackson,
Ben Kingsley,
Blair Underwood,
Anne Archer,
and
Guy Pearce
Retired Marine Colonel and attorney Hays Hodges (Jones) defends his old friend and comrade-in-arms Col. Terry Childers (Jackson), a highly decorated 30-year Marine veteran, who has been court-martialed for ordering his troops to fire on a hostile crowd storming the U.S. embassy in Yemen which results in the deaths of many civilians.
| GENRE(S): |
Suspense/Thriller
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
James Webb (story)
Stephen Gaghan
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
William Friedkin
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: October 10, 2000
Video: October 10, 2000
Theatrical: April 7, 2000
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
128 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
75
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
The drama ultimately retreats to safer, duller, more illogical, and more reactionary impulses and stereotypes.
75
San Francisco Chronicle
Bob Graham
But the single most compelling performance may belong to Australian actor Guy Pearce.
70
LA Weekly
John Patterson
Worth it, though, for the conviction and ramrod-erect bearing that pros Jackson and Jones bring to their roles.
70
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
Friedkin turns on the juice and Jones and Jackson let it rip.
63
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
Works splendidly as a courtroom thriller about military values as long as you don't expect it to seriously consider those values.
63
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
The setup doesn't make sense from the get-go.
63
New York Post
Jonathan Foreman
As mechanical and predictable as a cuckoo clock, it shouldn't work half as well as it does.
60
Newsweek
Ted Gideonse
Jones even manages to save this somewhat tiring film.
60
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Friedkin does a superb job of serving up the well-appointed script by James Webb and Stephen Gaghan.
50
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
Written with such murderous gravity, certainty and gloomy solemnity - such an absence of real life or feeling - that it tends to kill our interest.
50
USA Today
Mike Clark
The sentiments here are thoroughly semper fi, but the result occasionally works at cross-purposes.
50
Baltimore Sun
Chris Kaltenbach
This military courtroom drama is full of questions, but woefully short of answers.
50
Film.com
John Hartl
What rescues the movie, time and again, is the strength of Jones' and Jackson's performances.
50
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
It's bottom-feeder entertainment wrapped up in high-minded airs.
50
Variety
Todd McCarthy
A broad and obvious approach to ambiguous material that's virtually all plot mechanics with little nuance or characterization.
50
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
Passable, moderately diverting dramatic entertainment.
50
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
Sometimes, movies would work better if you couldn't see them.
50
The New York Times
A.O. Scott
There's not much going on here, and there is little suspense.
50
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
It's a deftly executed crowd-pleaser, but it's dishonest to the core.
40
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
It is the verdict of this court that it be led to a stockade reserved exclusively for cheap, pandering movies and duly shot.
40
Austin Chronicle
Marjorie Baumgarten
It's amazing the filmmakers never really concern themselves with satisfying the audience's rules of engagement.
38
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
A casualty of its own clumsy storytelling.
38
Boston Globe
Jay Carr
Strenuously as it tries, and pulse-poundingly successful as the embassy rescue scene is, Rules of Engagement never engages us.
38
Mr. Showbiz
Richard T. Jameson
Pearce is shot in such distorting closeups that he looks like an overdeveloped athlete who's been getting steroid injections in his cheeks.
35
TNT RoughCut
Susannah Breslin
Formulaic and pretty darn plodding.
33
Portland Oregonian
Barry Johnson
Plays like an episode of "JAG," the naval courtroom TV series. A L-O-N-G episode.
30
Film.com
Peter Brunette
It just doesn't work. Worse, it's downright offensive.
25
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
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.
25
San Francisco Examiner
Wesley Morris
A wildly dull, predictable script whose holes seem to be courtesy of random sniper fire.
25
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Spoiled by its simplistic portrait of people from the Mideast as incorrigibly violent and untrustworthy.
10
Village Voice
Michael Atkinson
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.
 The average user rating for this movie is 6.6 (out of 10) based on 3 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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