The Exorcist's implausible plot is told with gritty realism from a skeptic's eye, marking it as persuasive from start to finish, while Rules of Engagement, whose story of grey military corruption in the Middle East could have been ripped from the headlines, is too stylish for its own good--we believe it as much as we believe every other overcooked Hollywood production. Take the escalating theatricality of the courtroom scenes: by the time Colonel Terry Childers (Samuel L. Jackson) is ushered to the witness stand, the camera is practically on its side, and the lighting has turned incongruously chiaroscuro. We may as well have switched channels to High Noon, for there's no context for this shift beyond Friedkin's lack of faith in his own documentary roots.
Childers, on trial for putting dozens of Yemen civilians to death in a reconnaissance mission, has sought the lawyerly assistance of a comrade he saved in Vietnam, Hays Hodges (Tommy Lee Jones). What's at stake is whether the townspeople were armed and firing at U.S. troops when Childers gave the order, an extremely difficult notion to confirm or deny, as all tape records of the incident have been incinerated by the weaselly head of National Security (Bruce Greenwood). (One of a handful of pedestrian plot points.) Meanwhile Hodges has a crisis of conscience when he travels to Yemen and meets with suffering survivors of the incident.
Certainly, Rules of Engagement entertains. It has stirring action and sturdy performances to recommend it, though the relatively upstart Greenwood is already being typecast, as his role--which amalgamates the scum-sucking characters he played on "The Larry Sanders Show" and in last year's Double Jeopardy--illustrates. In fact, my heart sank during Greenwood's first scene with Jones, as it played all too much like a Double Jeopardy reunion--these days, Friedkin is utterly interchangeable with Bruce Beresford, the hack responsible for that Ashley Judd vehicle. Which may suit you just fine; I feel as if the passage of time has polished the edges off another great filmmaker.
Technically, Rules of Engagement fulfills the potential of the DVD format. A sumptuous 16x9-enhanced, 2.35:1 widescreen transfer (the first time Friedkin has worked in this ratio) is darn near overshadowed by an excellent Dolby Digital 5.1 track. (The image is so detailed that Jones and Jackson, both of etched faces, fail to convince as young soldiers in 'Nam.) I cannot get past how good the Gary Rydstrom-supervised mix sounds in the war sequences--although we're not talking the level of aural artistry he applied to Saving Private Ryan, the disc should quickly gather a reputation for its outstanding sidewall imaging and sternum-rattling bass. Keep the volume a hair below reference level, or chance pulling a Marty McFly on your speaker set-up.
Rules of Engagement
includes another of Friedkin's animated commentaries, thirteen minutes' worth of cast and crew interviews (under the heading "A Look Inside"), and a (strictly promotional) behind-the-scenes featurette (23 mins.). Friedkin begins his monologue by encouraging us to ignore what he says and extract our own meanings from the film, "because I might be wrong." But the remainder of the track is ultimately light on interpretation and long on the minutiae of getting a script to the screen, or filling in those gaps on the page (according to Friedkin, the lengthy opening battle was devised on a shot-by-shot basis--very impressive). More endurable, in some ways, than the movie itself.-Bill Chambers
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