Good action, good acting

Rating: 7/10 (5 April 2000)

Send in the Marines really comes alive when Samuel Jackson's troops swoop in to evacuate the American Embassy in Yemen. The magnificent action, taking some of the techniques from Saving Private Ryan a step further, catches up the viewer and then plunges him or her right into the moral question at the heart of the film as women, children, and old men get blasted apart by Marine bullets. The courtroom drama pales by contrast and only the strong performances of Jackson, Tommy Lee Jones and Guy Pearce carry the weak script. The evil White House aide is too irredeemably evil, the plot device of the missing tape too improbable. The moral question, which cannot be resolved, is too glibly let fall to the ground.