Stop-Loss

Each evening shortly before 6pm Jim Lehrer’s Newshour on SBS TV ends with a silent roll-call of US soldiers that have died that day in Iraq. All that appears is a photo of the deceased in uniform, their name, age, rank and home town. It is a brilliantly effective condemnation of the war. As the faces of these young people, mainly males and mostly in their early 20s, appear one after another, be they from Tuscon or Atlanta, one can only feel sorrow for the blind waste. Kimberly Peirce’s film works like a dramatization of that feeling – a story of young, uneducated, lower class males used and sacrificed by a cynical, cosseted regime in the name of patriotism and The American Way.

Stop-Loss works well in portraying the cost of war, not so much on the battlefield, but on those who survive it. It is, however, less successful in detail. I can’t say I ever understood clearly what “stop-loss” is. Some kind of exercise of a right by the American Government to send soldiers back to Iraq who don’t want to go back, was as close as I got. What gives the Government this seemingly grotesque right is never explained. And as much as one feels empathy with Peirce’s position, the generic quality of her delivery undermines Stop-Loss somewhat, particularly as it progresses, the film falling back on some very conventional set-ups and improbable dialogue to drive home its message (the confrontation between Brandon and Steve at Tommy’s funeral is a notable offender). In this respect, although Ryan Phillippe's performance is very good, and acknowledging that he is, after all, the film’s “hero”, his Brandon feels a little too intelligent and level-headed to convince as a down-home boy. Channing Tatum’s Sgt Shriver and Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Tommy, on the other hand, as they struggle unsuccessfully to articulate their confusion are much more on the money. Abbie Cornish does a convincing job as a Texan gal although she is not asked to do a whole lot more than act butch.

I doubt that I would be alone in questioning the movie’s ending, which is a complete about-face on what has driven the narrative henceforth – Brandon’s decision that he’s had enough of killing – and that took him (and Michelle) on a lengthy road trip to New York and back to the Texas/Mexico border. Given that we have followed Brandon’s journey in some depth to this point Pierce’s treatment of his change of heart feels too superficial.

Stop-Loss is a well-made film of commendable sincerity that starts off with great promise which it does not entirely adhere to, seeming to lose sight of the specifics of the Iraq war in a condemnation of war in general.

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