Please: No more courtroom scenes

Rating: 4/10 (16 April 2000)

I beg some casting director to put Samuel L. Jackson into a role where he doesn't have to be a bad-ass. It seems like every movie he makes has some speech where he takes his "Pulp Fiction" character with him.
It's not because he's a bad actor. On the contrary, he plays bad-ass better than anyone else in Hollywood.
It's just getting old.
Jackson's performance in "Rules of Engagement" is not the only thing that's old, however. Government cover-ups and high drama court scenes also lace this film, and they do so in the most predictable manner.

Jackson plays a marine officer who is charged with murder after ordering his troops to fire into a crowd of civilians outside the U.S. embassy in Yemen. He asks his longtime marine buddy (Tommy Lee Jones) to represent him.
This movie could have made an extremely intelligent war film. The pictures of the crowd after being massacred are terribly frightening, and audience members actually start to question their loyalty to Jackson's character. Such mixed feelings are refreshingly similar to those envoked from "Three Kings."
In fact, the entire first half of the movie has extremely well shot war scenes, plus surround sound used as effectively as it has ever been used.
Then predictibility sets in.
The audience becomes convinced that Jackson's character should be a hero, not a criminal. Jones' character delivers an emotional closing argument. The final scene of the movie shows captions of what happened to all of the characters in the movie.
What was so appealing about "Erin Brockovich" was that, despite being a movie about a court case, there was not one scene from inside the court. There's no such luck in "Rules of Engagement."
Plus, why do fictional movies insist on making epilogues? If a movie is based on a true story, it makes sense because the viewer is curious about where the characters are now. However, in "Rules of Engagement," some of the most compelling plot developments occur in the epilogue. It becomes a cop-out piece of cinema and is unfair to the viewer.
Despite all of its negatives, "Rules of Engagement" certainly has its moments. Jackson and Jones have a surprising amount of chemistry - much more than one would think considering their careers. Plus, those who enjoy fake courtroom drama would probably enjoy the cliches carried through in this film.
For the most part, however, "Rules of Engagement" is what most people find annoying about big-production Hollywood dramas - big name actors, but overwhelming predictibility.