In 1968, during the
Vietnam War, a disastrous American advance leaves
U.S. Marine Lieutenant Hayes Hodges wounded and his men dead. His fellow platoon leader Lieutenant Terry Childers executes a
North Vietnamese prisoner to intimidate a captive officer into calling off a mortar attack on Hodges' position; sparing the officer's life, Childers rescues Hodges. In 1996, Hodges, now a colonel, is set to retire after 28 years as a
JAG officer. At his pre-retirement party at the
Camp Lejeune Officers Club, he is honored by his old friend Childers, now a Colonel and the commanding officer of a
Marine Expeditionary Unit. Childers and his unit are deployed to Southwest Asia as part of an
Amphibious Readiness Group, called to evacuate the
U.S. Ambassador to Yemen when a routine anti-American demonstration at the embassy turns violent. Escorting Ambassador Mourain and his family safely to a helicopter, Childers retrieves the embassy's American flag before they depart. Things turn for the worse when demonstrators begin shooting at the Marines, resulting in three fatalities. Childers orders his men to open fire on the crowd, resulting in 83 deaths and over 100 injured, most of whom were civilians. American diplomatic relations in the Middle East severely deteriorate after this, so
U.S. National Security Advisor Bill Sokal pressures the military to
court-martial Childers, hoping to salvage relations by placing all blame for the incident on the colonel. Childers asks Hodges to serve as his defense attorney, and he reluctantly accepts. Hodges rejects a plea deal from the prosecutor, Major Biggs, who is convinced of Childers' guilt but privately refuses to consider the death penalty. With little time to prepare a defense, Hodges goes to Yemen, where hostile witnesses and police claim that the Marines fired first on the unarmed crowd. Visiting the abandoned embassy and some of the wounded, he notices an undamaged security camera and scattered audio cassette tapes. Returning to the U.S., Hodges confronts Childers about the complete lack of evidence to support his version of events, resulting in a fistfight. Sokal burns a videotape revealing the crowd was armed and fired on the Marines first. He also forces Mourain to lie on the stand that the crowd was peaceful and that Childers ignored his orders and was violent and disrespectful to him and his family. Hodges meets with Mourain's wife, who admits Childers acted valiantly but refuses to testify. Captain Lee, who hesitated to follow Childers' order, is unable to testify to having seen gunfire from the crowd. A Yemeni doctor testifies that the tapes Hodges found are propaganda inciting violence against Americans but declares the protest was peaceful. With Sokal on the stand, Hodges presents a shipping manifest proving that the tape from the undamaged camera was delivered to Sokal's office but disappeared, with footage that would likely have exonerated Childers. Taking the stand, Childers explains that he was the only surviving Marine able to see the crowd was armed. On cross-examination, Biggs goads Childers into admitting that he ordered his men to open fire by shouting "waste the motherfuckers". Childers argues that he would not sacrifice the lives of his men to appease the likes of Biggs, to Hodges' dismay. The prosecution presents Colonel Binh Le Cao, the Vietnamese officer whose life he spared, as a rebuttal witness, testifying that Childers executed an unarmed prisoner of war. During Hodges' cross-examination, Cao agrees that Childers took action to save American lives and that, if circumstances were reversed, Cao would have done the same. After the trial, Hodges confronts Sokal about the missing tape, vowing to uncover the truth. Childers is found guilty of the minor charge of
breach of peace but cleared of
conduct unbecoming an officer and murder; Biggs approaches Hodges about investigating Childers' actions in Vietnam, but Hodges declines to testify. Leaving the courthouse, Cao and Childers salute each other. An epilogue reveals that Sokal was found guilty of
destroying evidence and Mourain of
perjury, both losing their jobs, while Childers
retired honorably. ==Cast==