Tense, Well-Acted Thriller!

Rating: 9/10 (6 March 2013)

Rules of Engagement, directed by the great William Friedkin, is a great good, tense thriller. This movie happens to have two film genres working for it. The first half of the film is a war film and the second half is a tense courtroom drama which is very well-made despite many clichés we usually see in courtroom films. Also, this film has two very hard-working actors going for it: Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson.
This film is about a former Vietnam soldier who is asked to evacuate an American ambassador from Yemen but while he is doing that, all hell breaks loose. This soldier when he gets back home, recruits his friend whose life he saved in Vietnam to be his lawyer, so he can prove his innocence showing that he did not shoot into a crowd of unarmed civilians.
Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson are two of the most respected actors in the business today. They do very well in this film and with their abilities, they seemed liked they coasted through this film. They have very good chemistry working together. I also liked Guy Pearce as the prosecutor because he is also a well-respected actor. I wanted to see more of Ben Kingsley and Anne Archer because they were the plot holes of the film. There was one scene involving Jones and Archer where Jones ask her to be a witness, but nothing comes from that. That is the only problem I had with this movie.
Overall, this is quite a tense film especially the latter part of it. This movie has many clichés but if they are filmed well, then they usually work. The early war scenes in both Vietnam and Yemen are action-packed. This is a film that relates to government corruption and the military style of today's world. I rate this film 9/10.