The President needs to see this film

Rating: 10/10 (29 March 2008)

Director-writer Kimberly Peirce has proved she can make a film of high intensity and great conflict while still showing the human side when she made "Boys Don't Cry." That movie was based on an actual murder of butch lesbian, not a mainstream topic, and Hilary Swank won her first Oscar playing the lead.
Not one to shy away from controversial subjects,Peirce has recently released "Stop Loss". On the movie's web site, there's a section entitled"Comments" and there's a brief video of her encouraging visitors to ask questions with an opportunity to view all previous posts.
As I write this on March 29, 2008, recent news has broadcasted escalated violence in Basra with theShi'ities and Sunnies with no end in sight. However,slang for both is Hajji,a derogatory term used by the American military supposedly there to protect them.
What makes this film stand out from "Re.Acted" is that its screenplay does not portray them as simple minded grunts. The opening starts off with a quite realistic ambush actually filmed in Morocco, of which there will be many flashbacks beginning with the ceremony of the survivors coming back home to Texas to the end of the picture.
There actually is a reverence for the military and even a "lest we forget" to those Americans who lost their lives in this single episode of which no other is needed. But the flashbacks also shows the deaths of Iraqis that include women and children that haunts the platoon leader in charge, played by Ryan Phillipe.
Others in that patrol aren't doing so well either. Both Joseph Gordon Levitt and Channing Tatum get on mean drunks. In facts, Tatum beats his girlfriend,beating not shown, Abie Cornish, who will join Phillipe in his Odyssey to prevent getting stop lossed.
I have never heard of the expression of "Stop Loss" before and when Peirce heard it, it inspired her to create a story of someone coming back in high esteem and purple heart and getting just that, being forced to return to Iraq completely disillusioned.
Phillipe shows the same kind of quiet intensity he displayed in "Flags of Our Fathers", which also has disillusionment as one of its main themes. It's been hours since I've seen it and I'm still recalling it which for me means I was very much impressed with this film.