Stop-Loss writer-director Kimberly Peirce has
to be feeling a little like a green grunt on D-Day. Everywhere she looks, her
fellow Iraq War filmmakers are being gunned down in a hail of bad reviews,
tepid box-office, and widespread cultural indifference, their good intentions
splattered everywhere. The list of the War On Terror's cinematic casualties
includes Paul Haggis' sleepily received In The Valley Of Elah, a film Stop-Loss greatly resembles in theme and plot.
It almost functions as a reverse-angle variation on Elah: Both films center on the gradual
disillusionment of good soldiers conditioned to believe the best of their
superiors and the country for which they've fought. Elah examined this story from the
viewpoint of an ex-soldier trying to ferret out the reasons his son went AWOL
and disappeared; Stop-Loss explores it from the viewpoint of a soldier who goes AWOL
after his tour of duty is abruptly lengthened.
Showing a depth and maturity
unthinkable during his early days as a pretty-boy male starlet, Ryan Phillippe
stars as a skilled soldier who returns home from a particularly hellacious tour
in Iraq to find that he's been "stop-lossed," a policy that allows the military
to extend soldiers' contracts involuntarily. At first, Phillippe seems
convinced that he'll be able to pull some strings with a sympathetic
congressman, but he gradually comes to realize that his only two real options
are becoming an AWOL outlaw, or returning for active duty.
As in her superlative debut feature Boys
Don't Cry, Peirce
(working from a screenplay she co-wrote with Mark Richard) explores politically
incendiary subject matter with empathy, sensitivity, and a particularly sharp
sense of place, in this case, a lovingly depicted Texas. Stop-Loss is a human story first and foremost,
and Peirce and her stellar young cast ensure that the message never gets in the
way of the storytelling. It remains to be seen whether Stop Loss will be any better received than the
less accomplished but equally well-intentioned Iraq films that came before it, but
like her affectionately drawn hero, Pierce seems intent on facing her fate with
dignity and grace.