Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Samuel L Jackson, Guy Pierce and Ben Kingsley. Rated MA.

Loosely based on a real-life occurrence (Black Hawk Down) (though any similarity to persons either living or dead is disclaimed) Rules of Engagement tells the story of an honourable soldier hung out to dry for political expediency.

Col Terry Childers (Jackson) is a 30-year, highly decorated, marine veteran sent to Yemen to secure the American Embassy, under siege by a zealot mob.

On arrival, Col Childers and his men find themselves under heavy sniper fire from surrounding rooftops, but despite taking casualties, discipline is maintained and return of fire is not authorised.

Priority number one - get the ambassador (Kingsley) and his family on the choppers and away to safety. Number two - retrieve the Stars and Stripes, despite personally coming under intense small-arms fire, from atop the embassy and send it home with the ambassador.

With the ambassador safely away, Col Childers returns to the rooftop to assess the danger to US sovereign territory - the embassy.

A sergeant is shot and killed, falling almost into the colonel's arms. A quick look over the ramparts reveals a hostile crowd of men, women and children, all firing weapons at his position, further endangering the lives of his men.

"Captain, engage hostile targets as they appear."

"Negative sir, there are women and children in my line of sight."

"What part of my order do you not understand, captain. Waste the mother-*#&#*!$."

Eighty two men, women and children lie dead in the village square with hundreds more wounded and Col Childers, in due course, on charges of murder, conduct unbecoming an officer and breaching the peace.

"If I am guilty of this then I am guilty of everything I have ever done in battle."

Rules of engagement, orders for opening fire, whatever they are called, are a necessary and important tool tempering the barbarity of war. They are concise, unambiguous and, if interpreted to the letter of the law, very, very restrictive. When young men and women are ordered into harms way in any international game of political chess, it becomes unforgivable for those same shiny-arsed politicians and do-gooders to sacrifice those honourable soldiers as pawns, using ROE or OFOF as an executioners blade. This story attempts to tighten that emotional noose on its audience but it may, perhaps, be more immediate and poignant to our own brothers-in-arms who have worked, and continue to work, under such rules. I pray they will be supported in their hour of need.

Rules of Engagement is a hybrid. Half action movie -- starting in Vietnam and ending on the battlements of the American Embassy in Yemen. The action is full on, graphic and grotesque, a la Saving Private Ryan. Half courtroom drama -- a frantic race to save the honour and even the life of a loyal and dedicated soldier of his country.