(The following movie plot information was taken from the Wikipedia article about this movie)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_Engagement_%28film%29
Rules of Engagement is a 2000 American film directed by William Friedkin and starring Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson. Jackson plays U.S. Marine Colonel Terry Childers, who is brought to court-martial after men under Childers' orders kill a large number of civilians outside the U.S. embassy in Yemen.
James Webb, to whom the story is credited, is a former U.S. Marine combat officer, lawyer and U.S. Secretary of the Navy. Webb later served as a U.S. Senator from Virginia.
The movie jumps to 1996; Col. Childers and his Marine Expeditionary Unit are called to evacuate the U.S. Ambassador to Yemen from the embassy grounds, after a routine demonstration against American influence in the Persian Gulf turns into rock-throwing and sporadic fire from nearby rooftops. After escorting the ambassador to a waiting helicopter, Childers returns to the embassy to retrieve the American flag; meanwhile three Marines are killed by snipers on nearby rooftops. Childers, after appearing to see firing from crowd below, orders his men to open fire on the crowd and "waste the motherfuckers", resulting in the deaths of 83 civilian protesters and injuries to over 100 more.
Back in the States, the U.S. National Security Advisor, Bill Sokal (Bruce Greenwood), decides to proceed with a court-martial to try to deflect negative public opinion about the United States, shouldering all the blame for the incident onto Childers, and salvage American relations in the Persian Gulf.
Most of the evidence is stacked against Childers, especially because Sokal is determined for him to be convicted and, at one point, burns a videotape of security camera footage showing that the crowd had indeed been in possession of weapons, supporting Childers' claims. He also blackmails the ambassador Childers rescued, Ambassador Mourain (Ben Kingsley), into lying on the stand and saying both that the crowd had been peaceful and that Childers had been violent towards him and his family during the evacuation.
Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 37% based on reviews from 93 critics and reports a rating average of 5 out of 10. It reported the overall consensus, "The script is unconvincing and the courtroom action is unengaging." At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 45 based on 31 reviews.
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee described it as "probably the most racist film ever made against Arabs by Hollywood".Director William Friedkin, however, dismissed accusations that the film was racist: "Let me state right up front, the film is not anti-Arab ...The film is anti-terrorist.
No comments:
Post a Comment