Manipulative and senseless

Rating: 3/10 (31 March 2002)

Besides the right wing slant of the film and its "you hurt me, I'll destroy your family" attitude, I found the film not very believable. Why Childers (played by Samuel Jackson) insists on a loser lawyer like Hodges (played by Tommy Lee Jones) just because he has been out there is beyond reasoning. A lawyer's defense is about strategy, and any lawyer would find ways to justify his clients action, especially if the client insists on it. Also, if Childers absolutely insisted on a lawyer with combat experience, he could have at least found one that was also good at being a lawyer.
***SPOILER***** I would say the ending is a surprise to me, because the defense had absolute no strategy. Their method of casting doubt to the prosecutor's witness seems to be incredible, like making the doctor translate the audiotape or asking the Vietnamese officer, who is a prosecutor's witness, if he would have done the same thing in his case. How would the doctor translating the tape discredit his prior testimony, and why was the prosecutor anxiously waiting for the answer from the vietnamese officer, who was being cross examination instead of objecting? And why would the Vietnames officer, whose communication officer was executed by Childers right in front of him, be saluting Childers? Would the US veterans from WWII ever solute to a surviving Japanese or Nazi officer? And to top it off, the defendant himself proved that he was a hothead that cannot control his rage. But not to worry, since they have their secret weapon, which was to thrown the "missing tape" theory into the air as if it was a conspiracy. There are plenty of cases out there in real life where witness suddenly dies or crucial evidence disappears, but no prosecutor in their right mind would say "My witness which would have proved the defendant is guilty has suddenly been killed. We all know even though the defendant is locked up in jail, his evil cronies on the outside did the dirty work for him, so please convict the defendant because of that."
The battle scenes did not make sense either. Since they've decided to abandon the embassy, why not just withdrawal? Or maybe take the snipers out, but to wipe out the whole crowd? I guess it was that "a family's life for an eye" mentality. I would have thought that Childers would forward the demonstrator's co-ordinates to the ship so that they could fire a cruise missle at them.
Plus this went beyond the one dimensional stereotyping of ethnic groups, along with the blatant attempt at manipulation of our feelings toward them that are usually in those mindless action movies. As seen in the case of the really little girl whose leg was amputated from the shooting turns out to have been firing a weapon at the marines from the crowd, as were many of the women, children and old folks. Or the scenes where the women with babies were hanging around with their sniper husbands on rooftops. Somehow the film is trying to convey the message that wiping out everyone, including every elderly, crippled, child and woman is justified.
I don't know how Hodge's son, who was so against Childer's action, turn around and hugs his father for his rightous belief and defense of Childers, even though there was no evidence to make anybody feel that this action was justified.
What worked was the production of the fight scenes, with the tense feeling it invoked, that's about it.