OxfordPress.com

Grade: C-

Verdict: A predictable military flick with a ham-fisted touch.

Details: Starring Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson. Rated R for scenes of war violence and for language. 2 hours, 7 minutes.

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Review: "Rules of Engagement" is another of those A-list military flicks that climaxes in a courtroom, where red-faced soldiers shout conflicting reports of what really happened in the heat of battle. It's cobbled together from better films, such as "A Few Good Men" and "Courage Under Fire." What distinguishes "Rules" is its use of xenophobia to bolster its legal arguments, and presumably tap audience's deep-seated prejudices.

The court-martial is that of Marine Col. Childers (Samuel L. Jackson), whose rescue of the American ambassador in Yemen results in the slaughter of 85 locals who were protesting outside the embassy. The next day, the Yemeni government reports that the civilians were all unarmed, but we know otherwise. The movie even shows an adorable Yemeni girl popping a pistol that looks to be half her body weight; it's a sight so over the top that you'd be forgiven for thinking it came from a Farrelly brothers spoof of a war movie.

When Childers' best pal and defense lawyer Col. Hodges (Tommy Lee Jones) goes to Yemen on a fact-finding mission, he's harassed by murderous villagers, shown in scary point-of-view close-ups. The movie paints Muslims as bloodthirsty villains plotting unspeakable violence against the United States.

In other words, even if they had been unarmed, Col. Childers should have mowed 'em down anyway.

The last time director William Friedkin used the Middle East so ominously was to prep us for a date with the devil in "The Exorcist."

In "Rules," the stateside villains aren't much more dimensional. There's the weaselly, lying ambassador (Ben Kingsley), a ruthless prosector (a gaunt Guy Pearce from "L.A. Confidential," overworking a New Yawk accent) and, worst of all, the evidence-destroying national security adviser who wants Childers to take a fall for his country. (In case we miss the point, he's played by Bruce Greenwood, the hissable husband from "Double Jeopardy").

"Rules" is often laughable, but it's watchable thanks to its trouper leads, who try to give us the illusion that their characters have more than two dimensions. Jones doesn't pull any new tricks out of his limited, deadpan repertoire, but he's the movie's anchor, and he does well by his rousing court summation. He wanders through much of the movie squinting mournfully, as if trying to count how many zeroes are at the end of his Paramount paycheck.

Jackson creates the sort of hotheaded but decent leader you'd want on your side in wartime, and he gets to deliver an on-the-witness-stand blowup to rival Jack Nicholson's "you-can't-handle-the-truth" bluster in "A Few Good Men."

This movie's predictable finale is designed to send audiences out on a high note, maybe so they won't pause to realize that the slaughter in Yemen never would have happened if the embassy had had a helicopter landing pad on its roof.

A series of captions before the final credits assures us that all the powerful and corrupt guys in the movie got their comeuppance. It's a final reminder that this is a work of pure fiction.

— Steve Murray, Cox News Service