Review: Stop-Loss

Rating: 6/10 (28 July 2008)

The word "Stop-Loss" comes from US Military policy that concerning an involuntary extension of a service member's active duty service under the enlistment contract in order to retain them beyond their initial end of term of service date (thanks again, Wiki!).
Imagine what if you have one real good material on your hands, but you don't have any idea how to tell it properly. "Stop-Loss" is the movie with such a great potential. But all they've accomplished was spending times on far less intriguing plot that building around the story. In the end, this is just one big frustrating motion picture that should have no, must have been excellence.
Brandon (Ryan Phillippe), Steve (Channing Tatum) and Tommy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are three childhood friends and decorated war heroes who just got back from Iraq. Each of them has a goal in life to fulfill. For Brandon, he thinks he had it enough with the whole war things. But soon he realized that he have been stoplossed that required him to go back duty to Iraq. Against his will, Brandon and Steve's soon-to-be wife, Michelle (Abbie Cornish) decided to go to Washington DC and seeking help from senator. Since leader of the gang like Brandon was AWOL, it's only Steve to take a full responsibility for their group instead. And it's a bad time indeed, since in the most troubled friend like Tommy is about going to lose his grip.
From the sound of this, it should be an important film since this "Stop-Loss" policy obviously has a big loophole. And it's going to be interesting, if they decided to do an expose piece to point out that what went wrong with that policy. But somehow the director, Kimberly Peirce (her second directorial gig since disturbingly masterpiece "Boy Don't Cry") interested in brotherhood and post-war traumatize instead. And bad new is she didn't exactly did such a good job at all. An only three dimensional character I saw was a leading man Brandon (more on that later). In the meantime, his fellow friends are left unexplored (especially Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Tommy who has not only an absolute caricature character, but also poorly used to create any necessary tension between other characters). And while Brandon and Michelle travel together, there is a sexual tension going on between them. But the film did a poor job depicting it, and that's mean the whole point of that plot structure have gone completely wasted.
Like I've said, considering the topic they aimed for, the story itself is really weak by comparison. For the whole time, we saw Brandon travels to get some help. But after the trip came to an end, it kind of makes you feel that it is an absolutely unnecessary trip. Brandon can't get help as he hoped for. And his alternative solution (to run away) is planned and then dumped in a last minute without a proper explanation. Even when something really bad happened that eventually made everybody to re-evaluate their life, its feel shamelessly manipulative and cliché (which end up with unintentional hilarious macho-bonding thing between two lead characters). In fact, an intermission when Brandon visit his comrade who is simply beyond crippled (lose one leg, one arm and two eyes) is more touching than everything else in the movie.
If the cast will make you drool (especially girls), you're not alone. Stop-Loss packed with "next best thing" casts. But only Ryan Phillippe is worth watching (probably the most mature role of his career to date). Brandon is an important character, since he is a centerpiece to the story. It required him to show a lot of layers, anger, frustration, etc. And the good thing is Ryan knew his character so well and did a very good job (by the scene he beat up thieves who stole his belonging, I entirely bought his character already). On the other hand, there's too limited time for Channing and Joseph to start doing something mesmerizing like their leading actor. I don't know that it would be an improvement or not, but it would be really nice if they decide to share an equal screen time for those three young actors.
"Stop-Loss" is yet another anti-war drama like its predecessor (In the Valley of Elah, Rendition, Redacted) that didn't really break into a major audience. I don't really know why those movies weren't successful in United State (in term of box office). My guess (since I'm obviously not one of those people in that "The greatest nation in da world") is they might fed up with the whole war things that they've seen in the media every single day. So why should bother go seeing another one on a big screen? Well, let's just say I'm glad that I'm not thinking about it like them.