Watching this gritty portrait of young soldiers returning home to their small time Texas town from the brutality of the Iraq war, I couldn’t stop thinking over and over, “I know these guys.” I grew up in east Texas and listening to these characters chide each other, drink themselves into oblivion, and head out to a ranch house in the country to shoot at various inanimate objects, I kept thinking, “I’ve been there.” Filming mostly in Austin, my hometown, writer/director Kimberly Peirce managed to capture the true essence of the simple Texas lifestyle, beautifully undercutting the standard Hollywood exploitation of Texan extravagance. And then Ryan Phillippe shows up.
Vaguely recalling his duplicitous character from Gosford Park, Phillippe strolls on screen exactly like an actor studying to be a Texan. Employing a thick, downhome accent from no Texas town I’ve ever been to, a mix of aw-shucks hucksterisms and showy chest puffing, he threatens to steer this gripping portrait of a patriotic soldier recalled to the army against his will into the nearest cactus patch. Alongside subtly endearing and painfully realistic performances from Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Channing Tatum, who feel almost like transplants from war documentaries to the big screen, Phillippe’s Sergeant Brandon King feels forced and distracting, which is unfortunate as it's his story that's the main focus of the film.
As we follow Sgt. King from Iraq to Texas and then on the road to Washington D.C. to fight “the man” and the injustice of a back-door drafting system known as “stop-loss”, it’s clear that Peirce has done her homework. This is where it might be helpful to remind you why you know Peirce: almost a decade ago she directed the indie success called Boys Don’t Cry that rocketed her (and a then relatively unknown Hilary Swank) into the public spotlight. When her brother enlisted in the army after 9/11, Peirce decided to use her relative clout in the entertainment industry to produce a documentary about the war from the perspective of the soldiers. But after hundreds of hours of footage were shot, a feature film began to emerge.
Stop-Loss, with its very human tales of individual triumph and suffering, perches on the verge of being the 21st century’s defining war film. As much as The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now or Full Metal Jacket painted pictures of real soldiers in the Vietnam era, Stop Loss asserts its relevance all the more for addressing an ongoing war as a current event rather than as a history lesson. In an age when every soldier has a digital camera and digital images and video are readily available to anyone interested, what’s most shocking about the film is that we haven’t seen anything like it yet, though we’re likely to see more in the future.
Without resorting to gimmicky caricaturing or allowing her characters to become simple mouthpieces for ever-popular anti-war sentiment, Peirce tells a compellingly realistic story of the effects of war (both positive and negative) on the very members of our society that sacrifice the most. The script is solid, every shot feels alive and truthful, and though filmed almost two years ago, the story still feels fresh. Despite a miscast leading man and a slightly meandering plotline, this dynamic mix of fact, fiction, and fast-paced action sequence flashbacks hits all the right targets with the discerning eye of a well-trained sniper.
yes, it's true: Writer/director Kimberly Peirce's brother fought in Iraq. He would have been stop-lossed himself, as the rest of his unit was, if he hadn't been injured in battle and discharged.
