Touches You

Please don't spend money on this.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

An attorney defends an officer on trial for ordering his troops to fire on civilians after they stormed a U.S. embassy in a third world country. Rules of Engagement benefits from excellent work from actors Tommy Lee Jones, Samuel L. Jackson and Guy Pearce and of course an excellent and talented Cast in general. The story is interesting enough and the characters are well written and the viewer can of course feel sympathy for them. This film is not as good as 'A Few Good Men' but it's still a terrific Drama, Thriller and War Film that thanks to it's amazing leads and great story succeeds from start to finish. (10/10)

"Rules of Engagement" is NOT "A Few Good Men." But it is also not the travesty that many reviews have made it out to be. The film was released in 2000, prior to the events of 9/11/2001 in New York City. Much has transpired since then, and Americans are slowly coming to the realization that, while not all Muslims hate us, the haters are all Muslims. And that is becoming increasingly significant, especially given the results of the 2016 election. "Rules of Engagement" takes a crack at explaining how difficult it is to fight Muslim extremists, whose tactics violate all the "rules" of warfare. Muslim extremist gunmen constantly use "innocent" civilians as shields, knowing full well that American troops will find it difficult to shoot back. "Rules of Engagement" revolves around this dilemma. Considering when it was produced and exhibited, this was not destined to be well received. Screenwriter Stephen Gagnan and story writer Jim Webb (yes, that Jim Webb) are not fanatics; their resumes show them both to be thoughtful and respected. It is unlikely they would be telling a story they did not believe in, just as director William Friedkin would not be bringing it to the screen if he did not believe it had a valid point to make. Before 9/11, the pacifist persuasion in the United States was imposing a heavy hand of deterrence on the American military. "Rules of Engagement" basically advocates that the enemy has to be taken out, even if it means collateral damage. Of course this elicited hoots of derision in 2000. A year or more later, with a lot of collateral damage in downtown New York, the reaction would undoubtedly have been much different. Many reviews have pointed out inconsistencies, factual errors, glib script devices, even casting anomalies. True, but inconsequential. "Rules of Engagement" is intended to point out the folly of the United States' approach to its enemies in a war unlike any other - a war we are still fighting 16 years later. It made its point, just a year too soon.

This movie is very entertaining and becomes more relevant as the years pass. A Marine is sent to retrieve an ambassador and his family from an embassy after a supposedly peaceful protest is supposedly hijacked by snipers. The marines evacuate the ambassador and then fire on the "peaceful" protesters after several marines are killed. Government officials then lie and destroy evidence to blame the Colonel in charge. This movie was made over a decade before Benghazi. Much of the drama takes place in the courtroom where the Colonel hires an old friend who he served with to defend him. The government attempts to throw the full weight of their corruption to throw the Colonel in prison. The Hollywood ending unfortunately does not correspond to what normally happens in real life.

I would rate this movie a 0/10 if I could! "Rules of engagement" written by John Webb ( former secretary of the navy) is obviously a political movie that portrays Arabs of both gender and all ages as terrorists. This movie is simply an instrument used to demons and dehumanize Arabs, and anyone who applauds to this movie is either null of intellect or is a racist who enjoys watching movies that demonetizes Arabs!At the beginning of the movie, US marines are in the US embassy in Yemen which is surrounded by aggressive and barbaric protesters. Here we see Arabs portrayed as a mindless barbaric race as they are attacking the embassy. The US marines then rescue the diplomatic staff, and afterward they are entrenched on the roof while the protesters are raging beyond. However when the Colonel (Samuel. L. Jackson) orders the marines to wave down the US flag, 3 US marines get gunned down by snipers. After the Colonel has lost 3 of his men, he then orders his men to open fire on the crowd, but one of his men claims that there are women and children amongst the crowd, but this didn't give the Colonel any second thoughts, he then shouts "Waste those mother f****s!!'', and they eventually opened fire on the crowd causing the death of 83 civilians, including the innocent children and women. Here I was shocked. I didn't believe what I was watching. I was disgusted.After this horrific and bloody scene, investigations take place. The Colonel appoints his old friend Hodges (fought side by side with him in Vietnam) as his lawyer. Hodges then travels to Yemen in the hope of finding witnesses. Afterward, he was told there that the US marines have opened fired first. As he was roaming around, he finds a young Yemeni girl that has lost her leg due to the massacre, and follows her into a hospital. In the hospital he finds many children who are in the same bad condition as her. As he is leaving the hospital, he finds an audiotape on the floor which he have already seen many copies of the same tape in the streets of Yemen. During the trial, the audiotape gets translated it and we then discover that it is a tape distributed by the Islamic Jihad which orders Yemenis to obey God's command by killing every American in the embassy. Here, the movie continues to create a bad image for Arabs and Muslims, as they portray them as cold hearted killing machines that obey a political group that promotes terrorism.Even though Hodges has gotten himself a solid evidence, it was not enough to prove that the Colonel has did the right thing. By the end of the movie Hodges has gotten himself a solid evidence, he has found a tape that shows that the protesters attacked the US marines first, and it showed that the whole crowd were attacking the US marines, including women and children!! We suddenly learn that the little we were sympathizing with is no better than the other Yemeni terrorists. The Colonel is then freed from charges even though he has caused the death of 83 Yemenis!!! Basically, this movie is trying to tell us that an American hero's honor is worth more than the lives of 83 Arabs, and that the lives of 3 US marines are equal to the lives of 83 Arabs, and this movie also shows that Arabs of all ages and genders are terrorist.One thing that disturbs me the most is that in the age whereas the US government are fighting off offensive stereotypes of other groups, they have encouraged the stereotypes of Arabs. Since 1896 till the present, Hollywood are demonetizing Arabs and depicting them as terrorists, and as we are becoming more technologically advanced anti-Arab movies has increased massively in the last three decades just as more news reports in the print media, radio, and TV have focused on radical Arabs and bad guys since 1948. This has impacted on the way people see Arabs, people living in the Western world who have never been to the middle east would consider the two words "Arab" and "terrorist" synonyms as they constantly watch movies that depict Arabs as terrorists. Movies like Rules of Engagement that dehumanize Arabs can also cause many people to have Islamophobia, whereas people would feel unsafe and horrified in the presence of Muslims as they perceive them as terrorists, and the constant and repeated use of the structured images that vilifies Arabs may influence aggressive perceptions, actions, and emotions towards Arabs. Posterior to the 9/11 attacks, movies that vilifies Arabs have increased dramatically which means that the number of people that hate and fear Arabs have also increased, and unfortunately movies that contain the same old consistent pattern of hateful Arabs stereotypes that rob an entire population of their humanity is still present as "Washington and Hollywood spring come from the same DNA"(Jack Valenti).