A passel of popular young actors might not be enough to prevent “Stop-Loss” from falling victim to the current curse of Iraq War features.
There’s been much debate about the failure of movies such as “Redacted,” “In the Valley of Elah” and “Lions for Lambs” to connect with an audience. Are we not ready yet, or do the movies just remind us of a subject we’re already fatigued about?
Actually, I think it has more to do with the quality of those films than with audience disengagement. Unfortunately, Kimberly Peirce’s “Stop-Loss” is unlikely to change the trend, despite stars that might attract a younger audience.
The title refers to the military policy that allows soldiers to be indefinitely retained after their term of service is officially completed (aka the “back door draft”). Just such a loophole falls over the neck of Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe, back in uniform after “Flags of Our Fathers”), an Iraq War hero who’s just returned to his Texas hometown.
Brandon assumes he’s out of the war, until being informed that the stop-loss measure is going to send him back. This triggers the movie’s plot turn, a road trip that actually takes us away from the potentially interesting tensions of Brandon’s hometown and his circle of friends and family.
It also feels contrived that Brandon is thrown together with the fiance (Abbie Cornish) of his best friend and fellow soldier (Channing Tatum, from “Step Up”). Will sparks fly?
Peirce, who got deserved attention with her debut feature “Boys Don’t Cry,” works hard to keep the movie from tipping into a one-note anti-war statement. Maybe that’s the problem; a lot of these movies bend over backwards not to offend anybody, and wind up feeling blah.
The melodrama on display here has more oomph than “Elah” or “Lions for Lambs,” that’s for sure, but it rarely clicks into gear. There might be a whole story around the explosively troubled buddy played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, for instance, who can’t separate his war trauma from his return to normal life. But the movie doesn’t have much time for him.
“Stop-Loss” plays like a series of ideas, many of them urgent, about life in the U.S. today. But the story and the characters feel like afterthoughts, included to fill out the issues at hand. And that’s a backwards way to make a movie.
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