Conduct unbecoming
This film is anti-lie
By Phil Villarreal
Pvillarreal@azstarnet.com
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 03.27.2008
Those "Pray for Our Troops" bumper stickers have taken on a second meaning with the emergence of the backdoor draft, described in "Stop-Loss."
The film's title refers to the involuntary extension of a service member's contract. Veterans can be marched back into the fray with a proverbial bayonet to the back.
That's the fate decorated Army Sgt. Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe) confronts when he returns from the Iraq War expecting his discharge, only to be told he's been "stop-lossed" and ordered back to Iraq. He worries about leading his men into an ambush, as he did in the movie's harrowing prologue, and decides to flee.
Where he was once a Texas high school football hero, he becomes a scampering fugitive.
With the help of Michelle (Abbie Cornish), a childhood friend, Brandon decides to make a break for Washington, D.C., where he hopes a hometown senator will help him out. The plan is a longshot.
Not only is the military brass after Brandon, so is his best friend and Army pal, Steve (Channing Tatum), who came home from Iraq at the same time as Brandon. The guys always looked out for each other, but Brandon's choice puts them at a stalemate.
Steve battles war demons of his own and happens to be Michelle's longtime boyfriend. Further complicating the scenario is that Steve has become an abusive alcoholic who suffers hallucinations. Brandon is barely better off. He sometimes insists on sleeping in a bathtub clutching a pistol, convinced he's back in Iraq.
Having gone AWOL from the film scene since her stunning 1999 debut, "Boy's Don't Cry," director Kimberly Peirce, shows no rust, crafting a riveting psychological exploration of a frazzled warrior forced to battle for his right not to fight.
Much of the film's grace comes in the way it avoids clichés. You think you see bland plotlines advancing, but they dovetail into naturalistic conclusions rather than standard resolutions of melodrama.
Both Phillippe and Tatum explode into their roles with brutal, Brandoesque testosterone. They shed their pretty-boy pasts for gritty rawness.
Due to their work, what could have devolved into "Friday Night Lights: The Later Years" turns out to be something special — a level-headed examination of war's aftereffects close to "The Deer Hunter" in its unblinking effectiveness.
Despite its implications, "Stop-Loss" is anything but an anti-war film, just anti-lie. The characters are patriotic, Toby Keith-quoting red-white-and-blue firecrackers. Peirce makes no qualms about the morality of the war, but decries the practice of dangling releases in front of battle-weary troops who have fulfilled their duty only to yank them back under false pretenses.
If the war effort is bent on alienating the core of troop morale while frightening potential recruits from joining up, mission accomplished.
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