I am willing to cut some slack for dramatic effect and for tension, and the idea that there might be serious consequences for daring to ask that question does a lot to heighten tension and drama. I don’t demand that my screenplays be technically correct at all times, but I do think that deviations from the real world should be deliberate and serve a purpose if the movie is going for realism and wants to be taken seriously.
But calling it first degree murder rather than murder, or trying to present the prosecutor as at least marginally competent, but then having him charge only premeditated murder? That’s an unforced error that does nothing for the story.
Ok I have to take back the “first degree murder” part. I was going off a script I found online that had Ross in court saying the charge was first degree murder, but I just watched the scene and he says “Murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and conduct unbecoming a United States Marine.” I still think the point stands that if they were ordered to tie Santiago up and shave his head, murder becomes a lot harder to prove.
ETA: In his opening statement though, Ross says that they soaked the rag they used to gag him with poison, and they “entered his room with motive and intent to kill.” That’s absolutely disproven once Jessep admits he ordered the code red.
I suppose it is along the same reasoning for why pilots are told to drop fire on people but not allowed to write “fuck” on the side of their airplanes or why we have Geneva Conventions. The military is an important job, but the HOW they do their job is equally important. The military is not meant to be an undisciplined mob.
Jessup was a bit too self-important for his own good. Circa 1990s Guantanamo Base wasn’t exactly the front line of global conflict.
As a point of legal precedent, the case portrayed in Rules of Engagement did demonstrate that one could be a “Bad Mother Fucker” in defense of his men and his country, when the situation justifies it.
I’m not sure how that movie could demonstrate anything given that it is (1) fictional and (2) jingoistic nonsense. Although I suppose in some (very unfortunate) respects, it was ahead of its time.
This is what I mean when I think of professionalism in a military context. Here’s another take on it - a TED talk by a Dutch general explaining why he “chose the gun” as his tool of trade.
I don’t know what you’re arguing. I’m arguing that ROE is so far off from reality that it doesn’t demonstrate anything, except to the extent that (and here is what I mean about it being ahead of its time) large swathes of the population have built their worldview on similar fantasies (I mean, there’s a tape that would fully exonerate the Colonel, and prove without a shadow of a doubt that firing into the crowd was not only justified, but perhaps necessary, and that even the children were firing on the embassy, but the evil deep state political villain refused to look at it and then destroyed it for… reasons?).
But it certainly doesn’t show how one can be a BMF when the situation justifies it. It shows a fantasy of how a certain, growing and increasingly deluded, segment of the population perceives the world and notions of manliness, but that’s about it.
In reality there is no wall. It’s a chain link fence.
One of the more unrealistic parts of the movie was showing Jessup as some sort of celebrity officer. In reality colonels are a dime a dozen. If his career was tainted even without an arrest the next one in line would just take his place.
I think this whole thread illustrates the fundamental nature of an Aaron Sorkin product. He writes good stories, and some snappy dialogue, but he is not so much about the research.
If that is indeed the case, then every prosecutor ever would, in fact, charge every lesser included offense, and defense attorneys would still need to defend against all of them.
And while we might need The Wall, and men upon it, we most certainly don’t need men like Jessup on The Wall, for all of the reasons he himself expounded. When your life depends on others and theirs depends on you, what do you do? You follow orders. Jessup disobeyed orders. And then he left his men, whose lives depended on him, out to dry. If he really were the kind of man he claims he was, he never would have ordered the Code Red, and even if he did, he would have immediately copped to it (without having to be manipulated), before his men even got charged.
Col. Jessup makes that big speech about how “you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall”, but he’s a colonel. I bet he hasn’t actually been on a wall for many years. Lt. Cmdr. Galloway, for all her potential hypocrisy, is at least advocating for the people who actually were on the wall.
And you’re right about Jessup. He may talk a good game about “honor, code, loyalty”, but he’s also the guy who falsified records to cover things up, then swore to tell the truth in the cour martial and lied his ass off. He speaks of loyalty as something he gets, not as something he gives.
No, not at all. You have completely missed the point.
In the US Constitution there is a clause forbidding double jeopardy. That means that if someone has been tried, and the prosecution fails to establish guilt, then they can’t be tried again, not even if new evidence is discovered that proves guilt.
Lesser included offenses mean that if someone is acquitted of 1st degree murder, then they can’t be tried again for 2nd degree murder, and if that fails then tried again for manslaughter.
So far, I’m sure you knew that already.
Here’s the thing you don’t appear to understand. If a prosecutor tries someone for murder, then they might charge lesser included offenses as an alternative. The jury may be given the option of finding the defendant guilty of manslaughter instead of murder. But the prosecutor often doesn’t want to give the jury an easy way out. They must find murder, or not at all.
And if manslaughter is not specifically charged, the jury can’t decide for themselves to find manslaughter instead of murder.
I don’t think it’s conclusively established in the film. The only person who says there was a chemical on the rag, and that all traces of it had subsequently evaporated, is the base doctor. Kaffee suggests that the doctor is only saying that in order to excuse his failure to diagnose a pre-existing heart condition in Santiago. That’s the whole “we strenuously object”, “the witness is an expert and the court will hear his opinion” exchange. Given that we later find out that Jessup ordered the Code Red, and Dawson and Downey were not acting on their own to kill Santiago, it seems intended that there was no chemical on the rag.
Kaffee missed a bit of an opportunity while questioning the doctor. He testifies that there are dozens of chemicals which could have caused Santiago’s death and left no trace. I always thought Kaffee should ask him to name some, and how a Marine at Gitmo would be able to obtain them.
While we’re on the subject, the base doctor is useful in Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. He’s played by Christopher Guest, who was in The Princess Bride and This is Spinal Tap, among others.
