A devastating character study; not a war film.

Rating: 9/10 (7 April 2008)

Last year, the film industry produced a series of Iraq-war based films that flopped immensely at the box office. Stop-Loss appears to be no different, and that's a true shame because this one actually deserves praise and deserves to be a success; because it's brilliant. Films like Lions for Lambs or In the Valley of Elah dealt with conspiracy in the government and the politics of the war, or the battles happening over there. With this the films try to strike an emotional chord with audiences who have no experience in the war; people who aren't soldiers but may be related to them or have no real connection to the war whatsoever. But in doing so they develop a cold, unemotional feeling that I can't get over and disables me from making any kind of emotional connection to the characters and as a result I end up disliking the film.
Stop-Loss couldn't be more different and that's why it succeeds so admirably. Its name is derived from a horrific injustice that's being used on soldiers (a sort of backdoor draft which allows the military to send soldiers back into combat after they've completed their military contract) but the actual use of stop-loss is just the motivation to get the plot going. Not to say that this tactic the military employs is taken lightly in the film. Director Kimberly Peirce hits us hard with the tragic, dirty-handed use of force that the military uses but its effect on the soldiers takes a backseat to the torturous experience of trying to get back to their life after fighting through the horrors of war. The film focuses primarily on three soldiers and all three men have their own wrenching story about trying to cope with life after the war.
The film opens up in Iraq as an attack on a group of soldiers leads a chase scene through a barren city and into a narrow alley. Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe) leads these soldiers into the alley, where an ambush strikes them. The next few minutes are some of the most wrenching, horrifying moments of war I've seen on screen. A grenade rolls into the alley and Rico Rodriguez (Victor Rasuk) dives to protect one of his fellow soldiers. As a result, half of his skin is burnt severely and eventually he loses his right arm and right leg. Brandon scrambles to get control of the situation and protect his men, but the chaos is too much. Tommy Burgess (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) sees his best friend take a bullet in the jaw and another in the neck. He snaps and picks up a machine gun and starts taking down everyone he sees on the rooftops attacking him. Steve Shriver (Channing Tatum) follows an attacker into a building, despite Brandon's warning. A few moments later we hear him calling for help and Brandon quickly storms in. Brandon saves Steve but not after killing a few innocent civilians (including a woman and some children) with two grenades, whose only crime was living with a man who attacked these soldiers. Later on in the film, we find out that an event even more traumatic occurred while Brandon walked Steve out of the blood-stained building.
Soon after when they return home, Brandon finds that he has more problems than dealing with the trauma of his friends. He reports to turn in his gear to the military and is stunned to find that he is assigned to report back to duty at the end of the month. When he complains to his higher-up, he ends up being escorted to military prison to wait until he is shipped back. Thinking on his feet, Brandon takes down the two men escorting him, finds Steve's jeep and drives off. He is officially AWOL. When he tells his family and Michelle what happens, they are also stunned and struggle thinking of what to do. Brandon remembers a Senator telling him that if he ever needs a favor, to ask him, and decides to head up to Washington D.C. to take the Senator up on his offer. Steve's fiancée Michelle (Abbie Cornish) offers to drive with him, knowing that Steve is likely to suffer from stop-loss as well. So off they go on a road trip to try and stop this cruelty to soldiers.
This film is getting hit with more insults about being just another 'anti-war' or 'anti-Iraq film'. Due to these claims, it's going to fail at the box office just like every other film labeled with that title has. The tragic thing about that is the fact that this film really has little to do with Iraq. Peirce never implies whether she is for or against the war and none of the characters do. She criticizes the government's use of the stop-loss technique, but whether you support the war or not it is quite clear that what they are doing to these men is so wrong that it should be criminal. This film is an incredibly devastating character study focused around men who are torn apart mentally because of the war, but in doing that Peirce doesn't come out and say that the war is wrong. She says that stop-loss is wrong and that men who suffer from the war shouldn't be sent back there within a month of returning home. An impressive film that struck me deeply and still has me holding back tears when I think of it.