Rules of Engagement (2000) * * *

Directed by:  William Friedkin

Starring:  Tommy Lee Jones, Samuel L. Jackson, Guy Pearce, Ben Kingsley, Anne Archer, Bruce Greenwood

Rules of Engagement stars Samuel L. Jackson as the intense Marine Col. Terry Childers, who is tasked with evacuating the U.S. Ambassador to Yemen (Kingsley) when local protestors begin to grow loud and possibly violent outside the embassy.  Childers helps the grateful ambassador and his family to escape, but then the protestors and snipers seemingly fire on Childers' unit and he responds by ordering his team to shoot into the ground.  83 people in the crowd are killed and hundreds of others wounded.  The worldwide headlines say it's a massacre, and Childers is court-martialed for murder.

Childers calls on his longtime friend and former Vietnam cohort Col. Hays Hodges (Jones), whose life Childers saved in Vietnam, to defend him at the trial.  Hodges feels he is outclassed by the government's prosecuting attorney Major Mark Biggs (Pearce-speaking in an intense, inexplicable Noo Yawk accent), who is sharp and focused, but much younger than Hodges.  The courtroom scenes are done well and fall into familiar but suspenseful enough rhythms.   The wild card is National Security Adviser Bill Sokal (Greenwood), who foolishly destroys the embassy security tape which could exonerate Childers.  Why he does this and why he is against viewing the tape is not adequately explained or even comprehensible.  How could he rise to the level of National Security Adviser by making such dumb decisions?

That doesn't sink the movie, however, because it has a tried-and-true formula which it sticks to successfully.  It's not as polished or memorable as A Few Good Men or The Caine Mutiny, but it does the job.