Rating: 
Summary: good start,so-so plot
Review: movie ok, enjoyable but not worth buying. rent, rent, rent.dvd is in crappy widescreen only - rent the vhs version if you aren't fond of watching only half your tv screen.
Rating: 
Summary: An quick pace entertaining film.
Review: Tommy Lee Jones(Black Moon Rasing,Under Siege) and Samuel L. Jackson(Pulp Fiction,Shaft) give fine entertaining performances in this very fast film from director:William Friedkin(The Exorcist). The plot:Colonel Hayes Hodges(Jackson) is held responable for killing an un-armed civilians. Then a friend and an not so successful lawyer, Colonel Terry L. Childers(Jones) is defending him but the government official will do everything to protect themselves. Some strong moments in the film with a fine supporting cast is impressive. A good year for actor-Jackson and Director-Friedkin for thier box office hits. Like Shaft for Jackson and Friedkin for the re-relase director`s cut of The Exorcist. DVD has an fine picture quality(2.35:1) and Great Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. DVD include:An running commentary track by the director. Grade:B+. Panavision.
Rating:
Summary: Good premises, but execution "full of holes"
Review: Viewers considering the purchase or rental of this movie, will be drawn by the famous actors, and by the story premise torn out of today's (Oct. '00) newspaper headlines: restless Islamic fundamentalists, crowds throwing stones at soldiers, Yemen, etc. The movie's premises are good, and raise some troubling issues worth thinking about. The U.S. military's contradictory roles, policing and fighting and crowd control ... government bureaucrats who sacrifice soldiers for political gains ... tasking shock troops to fight in urban environments where terrorists mix with civilians ... putting soldiers at risk with conflicting ROEs, inadequate intel, and improper support. Great raw materials. Yet the execution of this movie disappoints. All the more disappointing in that director is William Friedkin, who was brilliant at handling complex themes in The Exorcist, The French Connection, and To Live and Die in L.A. Worst of all, are plot devices that "force the details to fit the story", leaving believability gaps so huge, you could drive a tank through them. Other reviewers have done a good job of pointing them out , so I won't repeat them here. More execution flaws. The script is formulaic, sapping the the movie of punch. The courtroom drama is wimpy, with inadequate emotional build-up / release. The photography and editing are flat and dry, TV-caliber at best. The military scenes deserve some marks for contextual immersion. I confess I was taken aback by some obvious tactical blunders in the staging of the embassy rescue op. For an interesting evaluation of ROE's portrayal of military tactics, see Sam Damon's review dated Oct.14th.
Rating: 
Summary: Not perfect but five stars notwithstanding
Review: Five stars for being an intelligent, timely and topical tale well enough done to grab and hold you hard. I write as former Navy (not USMC) vet and retired U.S. career diplomat. You better believe that we in an embassy under assault would be blessing those Marine or Navy choppers coming in to get us out and any other U.S. military involved in such an operation. But it wouldn't be only the ambassador and his wife and child as in this film. What about the rest of the embassy staff? The fight between the Jones and Jackson characters after Jones returns from abroad and suspects his friend is guilty is not credible and detracts from the story line. The testimony of the Viet Cong vet at the court martial is too contrived, a series of monosyballic yeses. But these are quibbles. This film addresses very big issues well and credibly: USMC traditions and loyalty, feckless senior U.S.government officials driven by politics and media first, courage and bravery versus sleaze. The assault on the embassy was very gripping. That sequence was so REAL. I was, sorry to say, so drawn in that when the beleaguered Marines opened fire on the crowd below I exclaimed, "good riddance." In fact, it remains unclear through most the film whether the people in the courtyard, as opposed to the snipers on rooftops, did have guns (though they were doing more than yelling, i.e., throwing Molotov cocktails). Good mystery direction in that respect. A superlative DVD sountrack too, very satisfying on my multiple-subwoofer sound system.
Rating:
Summary: a tommy masterpiece
Review: If you loved a few god men & tommy lee jones , then this is a five star for you.. ENJOY !!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Not original but still entertaining
Review: Despite various flaws, this film succeeds at creating a strong drama with two excellent performances by Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson. It is an interesting premise in today's world where the lines between politics and warfare become ever fuzzier. Is a commander justified to engage an enemy to protect his men if there is a high probability of killing innocents? With increasing frequency, radical groups use human shields to capitalize on this Western dilemma. This film brought some of these issues to the fore, and though sloppily done in parts, it was an entertaining treatment of the issue. Director William Friedkin (The French Connection) is no stranger to action flicks, and the action scenes were extraordinarily realistic. The trial was also well done from a dramatic standpoint, but some glaring flaws went unexplained. For instance, are we to believe that with all the firing that occurred from the ground, forensics experts couldn't find a single bullet hole with a ground-based trajectory? By far the best aspect of this film was the acting. Tommy Lee Jones was outstanding as the shot-up marine who turned into a second rate lawyer to stay in the service. Samuel L. Jackson continued to prove himself one of the better dramatic actors around with a stellar performance of the dedicated career officer thrown into an impossible situation and then fed to the wolves. Guy Pearce also gave a fine performance as the prosecutor for the government, although he tried to hide his British accent by putting on a New York accent and it sounded phony. Though unoriginal (see "A Few Good Men"), this is a very watchable drama with some credibility problems, but the flaws were more than overcome by the great acting. I rated it a 7/10. It offers food for thought regarding the difficult demands we make on our military in the world of post cold war international diplomacy.
Rating:
Summary: MORE THAN JUST A COURTROOM DRAMA
Review: 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 Washington and Childers is put on military trial for murder. He asks his old buddy Hayes Hodges (Jones) to defend him. Hodges also happens to owe Childers his life from events in Vietnam. The movie has the outcome you might expect and along the way we are introduced to a not so hidden conspiracy to frame Childers for the crime. What separates this usual plot from other films is the outstanding acting of Jackson and Jones. Jones takes center stage and wows you as a former combat Marine turned military lawyer who struggles to search for his own identity and questions his value as a Marine along the way. Jackson as always delivers a rock solid and emotional performance. The direction of this movie is particularly note worthy. It does an admirable job with addressing the modern military dilemna of fighting unseen enemies in urban environments. The director holds some things from you so that you will find yourself questioning the acts of the Marines involved in the shooting. Only at the end does he give you everything you need to know. This makes the movie better than most. Overall it is great and the only thing that keeps it from being a five star flick is that Jackson's character, although central to the plot, had to take a backseat to Tommy Lee Jones performance. I thought the nature of the film would have benefited from more scenes surrounding how Childers was dealing with the consequences of his actions. Still, it is a movie worth adding to your collection. Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: The intended and UN-intended messages
Review: ROE was written by Vietnam Navy Cross winner James Webb, author of some of the best writing of this century: "Fields of Fire", "Sense of Honor", "A Country such as this". Not only does Webb know combat he knows political back-stabbing since he was the Secretary of the Navy in the late 80s. His portrayal of the non-tactical marine lawyer is right on the mark, too. As I watched the film I asked for the Tommy Lee Jones lawyer to look for bullet holes in the embassy and use the trajectories as forensic evidence proving Samul Jackson's Colonel was justified for shooting into the crowd. Its not just a discrepancy in the film, its a show-stopper, Webb has bigger fish to fry and if bullet trajectory evidence is used, there simply is no movie, the colonel would be acquitted. Its like if Goldfinger just kills Bond on the laser table. The show-stopping movie point is something to balance against what the film is trying to say. And ROE has something VERY important to say. Intended and unintended. Clearly the message that our government would hang the senior on the ground leader of a fiasco "to dry" is a proven fact of life today. Its already happened; Son Tay, Desert One, Beirut, Vincennes shoot-down of the Iranian airliner (probably where ROE story was derived by making it ground oriented). In the last case, the government went after the background of the on-scene commander just as it did to the Samuel Jackson's Colonel in the film. The result being life imitating "art" as we have brow-beat warrior behavior in our ranks with PCness to such a degree that in real life a real Navy ship was attacked by real suicide bombers in a rubber boat in Yemen, killing at least 17 real human beings. The point of the film is that we can't send men into harm's way following unrealistic policies/ROE and then abandon them by making them the scapegoats when fiascos result. The goal of this film is to educate the U.S. on this linkage. Now for the unintended message! The military is not without blame for not being better trained/equipped in spite of it all. Let's strip a movie away to its essence, its a story restaged in live action. Its only as good as those who make it. Webb is a straight shooter, but he can only give us geopolitical and moral truths we should already know. His view of the battlefield is like most---no better than the Vietnam bullet "garden hose" exchanges that began the movie. First, fighting the enemy "even" bullets versus flesh, you can't afford to let the other's fire hit you first. The Vietnam battle scenes show that we need the best "sensor" available which isn't an electronic device but trained scout dogs organic to infantry units to get the "drop" on the enemy since noone wins if unarmored bodies exchange gunfire in a surprise meeting engagement. Later on in Yemen, Jackson did not brief his men adequately so that when they landed they knew what to do to silence enemy fire and regain fire superiority but got pinned down instead. In fact, the Army UH-1H and CH-47D helicopters painted to look like Mc UH-1N and CH-46 helicopters would have been shot down as they tried to land as they were fired upon without return fire (film shows gunman gleefully firing unhindered) as they are unarmored. It would have been "Huey and SeaKnight down" with crashed and burning helicopters in the streets ala Somalia. The men running from the helicopters did not form an adequate hasty security around them; Dale Dye should know better than this. In fact, men were dangerously close to the landing spot of an inbound CH-47D in one scene. A real foe would have blasted all 3 helicopters on the ground for sure. At this point, return fire would have to be rendered, but again a "show stopper". Next, the marines were not wearing body armor capable of defending against AKM rifle rounds and men died when if they had such armor they could have taken some hits in order to exercise restraint and find out who it was shooting at them at apply more surgical return fire. The next failing is that we need to develop a gunshield that attaches to the end of our weapons so we can have enemy fire deflect so we can see enough to aim and regain fire superiority. If you have lost this, then what was shown is true, most men will be pinned down blind under cover as the leader exposes himself for a look to gain "situational awareness" and tell them what to do, which in Vietnam-style tactics would be to all return fire at once as depicted. If Jackson's men were adequately briefed, equipped with body armor/gunshields they could have seen generally where the fire was coming from to suppress/kill it. Where was the smoke grenades and CS tear gas to disperse the crowd non-lethally? Marine Security Guards have such things (and helmets/body armor) but these things would be "show stoppers" and we'd have no movie. Where were the medically trained personnel to stop the bleeding, treat the wounds of those hit? The U.S. Army has a Combat LifeSaver in every squad; there should have been a Navy Corpsman with the platoon. Clearly the limitations of heliborne light infantry are shown in the film; and is visual proof of what we know from Somalia is true: that they need TRACKED LIGHT ARMORED FIGHTING VEHICLES that are helicopter deliverable to dominate physically the conflict on the ground without trading bullets into bodies. Light TRACKED AFVs landed with the marines could have secured the outer embassy and dispersed the crowd with non-lethal means without molotov cocktails or bullets harming them. At the very least, protecting the helicopters for them to wait until loaded with embassy VIPs/staff for extraction. These vehicles described well in General Dave Grange's Air-Mech-Strike: 3-Dimensional Phalanx book could also have TV cameras to document the truth (Tommy Lee Jone's lawyer character was eager to find to vindicate his client) so the military has its own source of proof that can't be conveniently "lost" by civilian bureaucrats who might have a different agenda than the truth. In the case of the marines they are buying expensive V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft that will fly a bit faster into trouble at a cost of BILLIONS but are too small to carry light AFVs to do the job on the ground better without ROE/Somalia-like results. For a movie to raise such issues and make you think about our sense of honor and unintentionally our force structure/equipment, you have to give it 5 stars.
Rating:
Summary: 'Engagement' Breaks All the War Film Rules
Review: Is Rules of Engagement a war film? Yes and no. It has all the elements of a war film but most of it takes place in a courtroom, which is symbolic of the road wars have taken over the years. They've become an extension of politics by other means, so where better to set the first of it's kind. It's the start of a new millenium and who better to turn our idea of what this movie should be about on it's ear than William Friedkin (of Exorcist fame). Samuel L. Jackson stars as a Colonel under investigation after a peacekeeping mission turned sour and he authorized his troops to open fire on Yemen 'civilans.' We don't see what really happened right off the bat and are left to question if Jackson was right in his decision, the morality of which is left up to our judgement and it's a welcome change not to have an ethics lesson shoved down our throats. Jones, an old war buddy, is enlisted to serve as his lawyer which he reluctantly excepts despite be vastly underqualified for the job. Though both Jackson and Jones are at the top of their form their parts don't give them much of an opportunity to show off, leaving that distinction to Guy Pearce (another L.A. Confidential alum) and he's great. This was maybe the suprise hit of the spring (along with Erin Brockovich) and deservedly so. It has all the elements of a great film but a few missteps deprives Rules of that distinction. But still it's one not to be missed.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good.
Review: Excellent action scenes, the digital sound is great. The acting and characters I found to be of a high standard and interesting. The movie is all about moral dilemas and the choices that soldiers under fire have to make. Alot of interesting conflicts. This movie is well worth the watch.
| 
