Ryan Phillippe and Channing Tatum in “Stop-Loss.”
Kimberly Peirce’s “Stop-Loss” depicts the human side of war. It is an uneven but occasionally searing film about the camaraderie between soldiers, the ingrained rules of battle that can bleed over into the civilian world, and the effects of a semi-obscure regulation that keeps soldiers fighting long after they thought they were home for good.
Ryan Phillippe stars as Sgt. Brandon King, a decorated soldier from West Texas who returns home from Tikrit, Iraq, with his Fort Hood unit, ready to get on with a post-Army life. But war is difficult to leave behind. His childhood friends, fellow soldiers Steve Shriver (Channing Tatum) and Tommy Burgess (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), both show acute signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Brandon is ready to process out of the Army but learns at the last minute he is being “stop-lossed”: returned to the front lines despite being technically eligible for an honorable discharge. This is too much for Brandon, who disobeys a direct order from his commanding officer (Timothy Olyphant of “Deadwood”) and goes AWOL, hoping to talk to his senator about being sent back.
Meanwhile, Tommy is drinking too much and getting in trouble with local police, and Steve, also due to get out soon, ponders a re-enlistment bonus and sniper school to the dismay of his long-suffering fiancee, Michelle (Abbie Cornish). Michelle decides to help Brandon look for options, but few appeal to a small-town guy who wants his life to become less complicated, not more so.
“Stop-Loss” is Peirce’s first film since 1999’s “Boys Don’t Cry,” and she brings some of the same sharp observational skills to these characters as she did with that film. Much of the first act of “Stop-Loss” possesses the look, feel and rhythm of soldier videos from Iraq or Afghanistan. Peirce gets the language and tone of military service and the catchphrases that populate soldiers’ existence with dead-on precision.
Where “Stop-Loss” falls short is when Brandon gets “stop-lossed.” The script becomes filled with explanatory phrases that play like textbook readings, and certain scenarios involving soldiers avoiding stop-loss rely too heavily on exposition. The realism of scenes in Iraq and Texas becomes scarce as “Stop-Loss” moves forward.
Even so, Peirce populated her film with strong performances, particularly from Gordon-Levitt, who imbues Tommy with realistic rage and confusion. Cornish, the Australian actress known best for more delicate roles in “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” and “A Good Year,” slips perfectly into her tough rural character.
“Stop-Loss” has real value for education. Not many people who have never worn the uniform know the reality of service, whether it’s fighting war or fighting bureaucracy. It could have achieved it with more grace and nuance, but then again, those things aren’t present much in life during wartime.
March 28th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
I was one of the very first soldiers to join the “all NEW volunteer Army” in 1973 and went to the 9th Infantry Division the first all volunteer combat division in the Army, I was there in Nov 1974 when they let the last of the draftees out of the Army just before Thanksgiving, talk about a party and old boots slung across the phone lines they were everywhere. Beer was every where, it was a post wide party that lasted about 3 days. The draft was over. On Jan 1975 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was made the youngest Secretary of Defense ever in our nations history, and I find it more than ironic that is was this azzhat that invoked “stop-loss” the “back door draft” on men and women who had fulfilled their contracts and should have gone into the IRR like the millions of men and women before them since 1976.
It makes me more than a little frustrated to know that Nixons proteges Cheney and Rumsfeld and George H.W. Bush (he was UN Ambassador and then Ambassador to China when Ford brought him home in 1976 and made him head of the CIA) are the same men that lied this nation into war, and have abused the all volunteer force that they were instrumental in setting up after Vietnam. The policies of the Nixon Administration forced the end of the draft and his proteges found a way to make a new one (legal) but a real shitty thing to do to combat veterans. How many men and women died on their stop loss tours, how do they tell those families how sorry they are and how proud they are that they made them stay? I encourage everyone to see this film this is a true American tragedy.
http://vets4politics.blogspot.com/