Critical Reception
Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 37% based on reviews from 93 critics and reports a rating average of 5 out of 10. It reported the overall consensus, "The script is unconvincing and the courtroom action is unengaging." At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 45 based on 31 reviews.
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee described it as "probably the most racist film ever made against Arabs by Hollywood". Director William Friedkin, however, dismissed accusations that the film was racist: "Let me state right up front, the film is not anti-Arab, is not anti-Moslem and is certainly not anti-Yemen. In order to make the film in Morocco, the present King of Morocco had to read the script and approve it and sign his name ... and nobody participating from the Arab side of things felt that the film was anti-Arab. The film is anti-terrorist. It takes a strong stand against terrorism and it says that terrorism wears many faces ... but we haven’t made this film to slander the government of Yemen. It's a democracy and I don’t believe for a moment they support terrorists any more than America does."
Read more about this topic: Rules Of Engagement (film)
Famous quotes containing the words critical and/or reception:
“Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)