Rules of Retardation

Rating: 3/10 (2 March 2013)

I cannot say I fully comprehend precisely what the writers were thinking... well, in fact it is just plain puzzling. They wanted to write a courtroom drama but when it came time to actually think of a point for the court case they apparently just drew a blank and decided to massacre a load of civilians for no conceivable reason.
The scene is just... ridiculous. So ridiculous I simply gave up watching. Samuel L Jackson (why is it every character he plays is called 'Samuel L Jackson'?) clearly sees the gunmen are on the roof when they fly in. The marines decide the best way of dealing with this situation is to run about on top of the ramparts and give the enemy a nice little game of duck hunt... rather than say, returning fire. Even if they had some standing order not to fire I think this rather gets superseded when half your men have just been shot...
Then when it comes time to engage Sam decides the best thing to do is to fire into a crowd of people throwing rocks as opposed to actually shooting the people shooting him... just... why? It seems there are genuinely a hundred other ways they could have had their civilian massacre plot short of just having the guy order his troops to pointless massacre them. He could have called in some inaccurate fire on a position, a building could have collapsed into the crowd from taking suppressive fire... even if he had just slipped whilst trying to throw a grenade it would have been more plausible. Ultimately I would have carried on watching it if this scene made the slightest bit of sense. If he had ordered his marines to fire on the snipers on the rooftops and had some of the women and children that were visibly clustered amongst them take some hits they still could have racked up the inordinate body count they so craved. Perhaps we could even see one or two rookie marines shoot into the crowd after mistaking a rock for incoming fire only for Sam to order them to stop. The prosecution would then be that of a looking for a scapegoat to avoid an international incident and the audience would be on the side of the war veteran defendant.
I gave up before the court case even started because frankly it would have been more plausible if they were trying to sue a unicorn from space for causing World War Three...
I am annoyed that I watched the first half hour of preamble in what looked to be a good film with a good cast only to find that the writer is a goddamn retard.