Rules of Engagement

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

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

San Francisco Chronicle Bob Graham

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

LA Weekly John Patterson

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

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

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

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.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

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

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

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

Newsweek Ted Gideonse

Jones even manages to save this somewhat tiring film.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

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

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.

USA Today Mike Clark

The sentiments here are thoroughly semper fi, but the result occasionally works at cross-purposes.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

This military courtroom drama is full of questions, but woefully short of answers.

Film.com John Hartl

What rescues the movie, time and again, is the strength of Jones' and Jackson's performances.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

It's bottom-feeder entertainment wrapped up in high-minded airs.

Variety Todd McCarthy

A broad and obvious approach to ambiguous material that's virtually all plot mechanics with little nuance or characterization.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Passable, moderately diverting dramatic entertainment.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Sometimes, movies would work better if you couldn't see them.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

There's not much going on here, and there is little suspense.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

It's a deftly executed crowd-pleaser, but it's dishonest to the core.

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.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

It's amazing the filmmakers never really concern themselves with satisfying the audience's rules of engagement.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

A casualty of its own clumsy storytelling.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

Strenuously as it tries, and pulse-poundingly successful as the embassy rescue scene is, Rules of Engagement never engages us.

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.

TNT RoughCut Susannah Breslin

Formulaic and pretty darn plodding.

Portland Oregonian Barry Johnson

Plays like an episode of "JAG," the naval courtroom TV series. A L-O-N-G episode.

Film.com Peter Brunette

It just doesn't work. Worse, it's downright offensive.

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.

San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris

A wildly dull, predictable script whose holes seem to be courtesy of random sniper fire.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Spoiled by its simplistic portrait of people from the Mideast as incorrigibly violent and untrustworthy.

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.