Stop-Loss too one-sided

March 31, 2008 —

Stop-Loss marks yet another of Hollywood's attempts to capitalize on the drama the war in Iraq has and is causing in the U.S. It also marks the first film from director Kimberly Peirce since her award-winning Boys Don't Cry in 1999. Truth be told, I'm tired of this new "genre," as there are so many films of the type, but Peirce being director of this film intrigued me. Unfortunately, Loss suffers the same fate as its predecessors, being more concerned with its message than its characters.

Loss is about a group of soldiers returning home to their small Texas town after a tour in Iraq - two of which are soon to be done with their service. Sgt. Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe) is the central focus of the film, and he soon discovers he is being stop-lossed into the service for another tour. Stop-loss is a sort of back-door draft President Bush created after 9/11 to keep soldiers in the military after their contract is up.

Peirce does a nice job at first of showing the soldiers' camaraderie and the turmoil they faced in Iraq through a somewhat objective lens, inserting videos that show their bonding at random throughout the film. The problem becomes that all of the soldiers on display start falling apart so that any objectivity slowly becomes subjectively liberal-minded.

With all of the characters dissolving mentally or emotionally, I wanted to see a control against these variables. Peirce seems to believe that if you serve in the military you'll either be brainwashed into something emotionless or be a complete mental wreck. I'm sure that war scars soldiers, but all of them and to this extent?

Another big problem with the film is Phillippe. I don't mind him, but I also don't think he has enough range for King. He manages frustration and his sense of responsibility, but I didn't believe his conviction and sadness.

Channing Tatum is more believable as the brainwashed "robo-soldier." Abbie Cornish did a nice job, but her role made little sense toward the end of the film. The superb Joseph Gordon-Levitt was reduced to having only two levels throughout most of the film. The strongest and most affecting performance in the film came from one of the smallest characters: Victor Rasuk as Rico.

Still, my biggest problem with the film is that it could have been much better. There were still moments interspersed throughout the film that felt very moving, haunting and genuine. If Peirce hadn't gotten so hung up on the idea of all soldiers being lost-causes post-service and deemed it necessary to turn Stop-Loss into an all-out anti-war film, she could have had a very strong character piece about war's affects on people - those involved in it as well as those not.