Stop Loss Movie Review
 
We are at war. We have been at war for well over five years in Iraq and Afghanistan (the forgotten war). During these wars over 650,000 American troops have served. Over 80,000 of those have been “Stop-Lossed” which means that they thought their tour was over, but the fine print of their agreement with the United States government allows for them to be pulled back for another go-around. Director Kimberly Pearce uses this fine print to peer into the lives of a handful of Texas boys who are serving in Iraq in her fine but imperfect “Stop Loss.”
We are introduced to our troops in Iraq via their pictures and homemade videos. Finally, Hollywood is catching up to the fact that consumers are electronic addicted, in fact it seems to be popping up most in films about the Iraq war where soldiers are routinely chronicling their day to day lives with electronic devices. Then we are with our troops manning a road block. Much goes wrong. They don’t all make it back. But A few do, and its home coming in Texas, especially for Staff Sergeant (Ryan Phillippe) and his best friend Sgt. Steve Shriver (Channing Tatum) who have completed their tours. King struggles to speak in front of a home-town audience when he receives a purple heart. At the urge of their superior, Shriver steps in, the hometown applauds. Thus things have already begun to go wrong. Of course the boys all go out drinking. And instead of raucous fun, it’s a fistfight and awkward silence as the soldiers begin talking about what they did and what they think must be done, in Iraq.
Pearce captures the rhythms of these Texans in a nice way, an interesting departure from Los Angeles and New York characters. The nightmare of homecoming has only begun. But I shouldn’t reveal the whole plot. Suffice it to say a grab bag of emotional and physical issues come up. Phillippe is our center, a strong leader who treats his leadership position with seriousness, until he reports for discharge only to find he has been re-enlisted, or, stop-lossed, against his will. Things happen pretty fast, and all of the sudden a returning war hero is an AWOL fugitive.
“Stop Loss” is touching, without being too one-sided. Well, I should re-phrase. It is clearly an American film only narrowly focused on the stop-loss idea, though through its visit to a VA and its focus on the quickly rising emotional problems of our soldiers it does question war in general. But some of the plot mechanics become a little awkward. The fight with the vandal/burglars. Driving to Washington to see a Senator. A resolution that happens too quickly. “Stop Loss” ends up like a pretty good folk song whose singer sometimes misses a note or breaks a string. Not bad, pretty good, but not great. While aesthetically I don’t love the mixed media usage, here it is to good effect if not a little overused, as it recognizes the reality of the everyone recording everything digital age. In George Bush’s America, always read the fine print.
Story: The story of a group of soldiers, one stop lossed, the others hanging on to their humanity in different ways. An indictment of the wartime experience. B
Acting: At times the roughness adds to these young men’s naivete. At times it seems like marginal acting. C +
Visuals: Neutral. C +
Originality/Innovation: A new twist on war, brought on by an actual policy. A questionable one at best. B
Enjoyability Grade: A fine examination of troops coming home, the politics of the “Stop Loss” and battles on the ground in Iraq. B
Overall Grade: B
|
