STOP-LOSS

Paramount Pictures/ MTV Films
Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey Karten
Grade: B+
Directed by: Kimberly Peirce
Written By: Mark Richard, Kimberly Peirce
Cast: Ryan Phillippe, Abbie Cornish, Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ciaran Hinds, Timothy Olyphant, Victor Rasuk, Rob Brown
Screened at: Lincoln Square, NYC, 3/25/08
Opens: March 28, 2008

“Stop-Loss” opens just days after we heard that the death toll of Americans in the Iraq War has hit 4,000. One aspect of the film that a viewer will notice by its conclusion is that director Kimberly Peirce, working with a script she co-wrote with Mark Richard, is politically split. On the one hand she appears to be on the political left, disgusted with the war in general but especially with the concept of stop-loss, sometimes called back-door draft, by which a soldier can finish a tour of duty in Iraq and yet be called back into service once, twice, as many times as the President desires. On the other hand, she dazzles us with a display of small-town Texans who welcome hero soldiers back from the fighting, presumably for good, while ending the story on a patriotic note. No matter. “Stop-Loss” is a solid entry into the more than one-dozen documentaries and fictional films about this five-year-old war, sharply filmed in Texas locations like the capital of Austin and small towns like Lockhart, with scenes of Iraqi battles shot in Marrakesh, southern Morocco.

After a boisterous opening which finds our men in uniform partying before they’re to be sent home preceded by familiar battle scenes in Tikrit that include an ambush leading to house-by-house skirmishes, “Stop-Loss” turns increasingly dark. The film itself turns from the colorful scenes in Texas where the whole town turns up including a U.S. Senator (Josef Sommer), gradually fading into a near monochrome as director Peirce focuses principally on a plight faced by one soldier, Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe), who is incensed about being ordered to return to duty after his discharge and seeks options that could keep him out of Iraq. Never mind that his superior officer praises the man’s leadership, impressing him as indispensable. Clearly, King is not afraid, having received a bronze star and a purple heart. He is simply stunned that his government would send him back after he has served beyond the call of duty.

Packing his gear in Texas, Sgt. King, accompanied by Michele (Abbie Cornish), the girlfriend of his best buddy Steve (Channing Tatum), sets off on a road trip to D.C. hoping to get his senator to cancel the stop-loss order. On the way, he visits his severely injured comrade, Private Rodriguez, who has lost an arm and a leg and most of his sight and is receiving physical therapy---a fellow who seems a cheerful as though he had just won the New York marathon. Understanding that the senator cannot touch the case since King is AWOL, he seeks the intervention of a New York lawyer specializing in creating new identities for men like King and sending them to live permanently in Canada.

Director Peirce, best known for her “Boys Don’t Cry” about a girl (Hilary Swank) who passes herself off as a boy in rural Nebraska, gets inside the head of her principal character, dismissing any thought that he is chickening out while implicitly criticizing the policy of stop-loss—a stipulation that has resulted in the return of some 80,000 American soldiers of the total 650,000 that have had tours of duty in Iraq. Yet her dissent is mixed with a patriotic fervor that makes us wonder just where she stands on the war. In any case, she knows how to pick actors. Ryan Phillippe is convincing with his southern drawl, eliciting the impression that Texas and New York City are different countries. Down there, they drink hard, they shoot pool, and they use their rifles and guns to take on soda bottles as we see with scenes involving the disturbed veteran Tommy Burgess (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who is more than happy to return to Iraq since he knows no other life than the army. By contrast, New Yorkers are presumably sipping Chardonnay as they debate the wisdom of re-establishing a military draft while in the confines of Nobu or The Tribeca Grill.

The pace is brisk, the acting energetic, but the film is awash with stereotypical types like the crying mother, the drunken soldier unable to adjust to civilian life, the brawls that soldiers get themselves into to prove they’re men even in their civvies. While documentaries like “Taxi to the Dark Side” are more for the arty cinemaphile, “Stop-Loss” with its handsome central figure (and his hot road-trip partner) should make the war’s effects on its fighters good drama for rank-and-file filmgoers.

Rated R. 112 minutes. © 2008 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online