Video: Rules Of Engagement

Herald rating: * * *

Running time: 123 mins

Rental: Today

Review: Ewan McDonald

Marine colonels Hays Hodges (Tommy Lee Jones) and Terry Childers (Samuel L. Jackson) fought side-by-side in Vietnam, where Childers saved Hodges' life by shooting an unarmed POW.

Hodges is invalided out of action so he gets a law degree and becomes a Marine lawyer. He also gets a divorce and becomes a drunk.

Years later, Childers is a much-decorated officer chosen to lead a rescue mission into Yemen when the US embassy comes under threat from angry demonstrators.

Childers is accused of ordering his men to fire on a crowd, who may have been unarmed but were certainly civilians, killing 83. Court-martialled, he persuades his old friend Hodges to represent him.

Jones and Jackson work well together, and for once here's a movie trial in which you won't pick the result.

Perhaps the two actors make the movie better than it really is.

It's the germ of an idea for a film but falls short because the directors and writers didn't seem to know what they wanted to say.