What a disappointment!

Rating: Null/10 (5 December 2000)

Although it's been a top rental in the stores, I couldn't remember Rules of Engagement being in the theatres. Now I know why. This easily goes into the worst movies of the year list (along with Romeo Must Die). Some specific complaints:
1. The opening scene where Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson play twenty-something Vietnam War soldiers (Jones by cleverly pulling a hat down on his head). We then join them thirty years later, where they look exactly the same.
2. Somehow, we're supposed to feel compassion for a soldier that not only order the killing of soldiers as well as women and children, but also presumably lost the lives of many of his own men. Now, I'm no military expert, but here's my question: Why, since they were vacating the embassy anyway, didn't the soldiers take a _safe_ defensive position to protect the workers while escaping via helicopter. Let the Yemen's shoot at the building all they want, for goodness sake. I would guess they would get bored and stop eventually. Ridiculous.
3. The plot just seemed to be a random sequence of scenes that only loosely made sense.
4. Most of the other criticisms have already been noted. I'll repeat just one: How, in God's name did they find the Vietnam guy from 20 or 30 years earlier for the trial?
Friedkin, Jones and Jackson should be cause for excitement in a movie, not a constant rolling of the eyes!