Stop-Loss

Iraq war movies did not enjoy a very good 2007. The audience was telling Hollywood they did not want war in their entertainment as war movie after war movie bombed, even the big budget ones like The Kingdom were failures. However, Hollywood was not about to listen and here in early 2008 we get the first official Iraq war movie. Only opening in roughly 1,000 theaters in the country, the expectations were pretty small for this testosterone filled, MTV films movie, directed by a woman, Kimberly Pierce who had not directed a movie since 1999's Boys don't cry. It did not open to big numbers, but Saturday night in Davis it played to a nearly packed house of college liberals looking for their next fix of Anti-Bushisms. They were not disappointed.

Brandon King(Ryan Phillippe) and Steve Shriver(Channing Tatum) are best friends who led their Texas high school football to championships, and then joined the Army with misplaced anger from 9/11. They served their 5 year term and they are on their way out. Shriver has a fiance he plans to marry, Michele(The cute as hell Abbey Cornish) and Brandon is not sure what he is going to do, except drink a lot of beer. The entire unit, consisting of Tommy Burgess(the incredible Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and a few other soldiers have been welcomed to King's hometown for some parties. Monday comes quickly and when King goes to turn in his Army stuff he is informed he must go back to Iraq because he has been Stop-Lossed. Stop Loss is an army term whereas on the bottom of your contract it states if the country is at war they can change your contract to keep you in. King calls it a "backdoor draft." King wisely points out the President said the war was over and he would not return. He brakes protocol by punching out some Army guys and taking off, leaving Shriver and Burgess behind to deal with the ramifications of his action as well as their own traumatic stress disorders. King enlists Michelle's help to get to Washington to talk to a senator but when that backfires, King is faced with possibly fleeing the country and starting life as someone else.

Stop-Loss is the uneven kind of movie that hits more than it misses, but is disappointing in a way because you feel it could have been better. Being an MTV film, the editing is,at times, too frenetic and the flashbacks especially feel forced and faster than they need to be. Phillippe does a great job as he shoulders the load representing the 81,000 soldiers who have actually been stop-lossed in this country. He cries well, yells well, but he is most impressive when he is going through the reality of trying to adjust to life outside of the army. There is a scene where he encounters some thieves that is as intense a scene I have seen this year, thus far. Tatum is second fiddle, but he shows a range of acting I had not seen from him in any of his other movies. Yes, he is still shirtless, in fact shirtless and without pants at one point, and he fills out an army uniform well, but he is on his way to making a nice career for himself. The real winner though, is Levitt. Having spent the last few years in amazing indie performances, it is nice to see Levitt get some shine in a bigger picture and while he is very supporting, he haunting on screen. His Burgess uses alcohol to dull the pain of real life and Levitt's portrayal of a man spiraling to self destruction actually gives the film some more heart.

I cannot speak on realities of stop-loss or anything like that, but I can speak on how this movie deals with it and how it deals with the military in general. The opening war scene is shown with a brutal realism and the language of the young soldiers makes them quickly identifiable. Making the kids from Texas was a nice touch, because we see that they come from a pro-war area and are in fact proud to have been over there killing people, but the movie is taking a very anti-war statement showing how difficult these kids' lives are when they return. Shriver is prone to digging bunkers in his front yard in the middle of the night. Burgess is not good at anything but being a soldier and King is worried another tour would kill him and kill his family. In all of this is Kimberly Pierce, finding a way to manipulate the audience emotions almost as well as she did with Boys don't Cry. It all played well in the theater jam packed with hacky sack playing, protest rally attending college kids as there were even cheers during anti-Bush sentiments, but I wasn't completely won over.

I am not against war movies, in fact, when done well I quite like them, and in the grand scheme of it all, this was a pretty good movie. The disappointing ending was probably the most real way it could have gone, but I feel like I wanted more from some of the supporting cast. I wanted to know more about Shriver and why he was so intent on sniper school and I would have loved more screen time for Levitt and his masterpiece of acting as Burgess. Also, I know some late editing was done to cut out the sex, but in doing so they made a lot of unnecessary sexual undertones between Michelle and Brandon. I understand why they decided to leave out the pair having sex, but then it leaves a bunch of scenes leading up to it that don't end up going anywhere. A weird complaint maybe, but if you see it I think you'd understand. Phillippe continues to try and get away from being just a pretty boy and he is proving to be a pretty good actor, but in the end this is still just an MTV movie filled with guys who like to drink beer and shoot guns.

Overall Grade: B-