stop-loss

After the success of her first feature film Boys Don't Cry, Kimberly Pierce returns to the screen with Stop-Loss, the first war film to be produced by MTV. You do the math.

Stop-Loss follows the struggle of Sergeant Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe). King returns from his second and what he had hoped to be his final tour in Iraq, only to discover he has been "stop-lossed." Stop-loss in the U.S. military is the involuntary extension of a service member's enlistment contract in order to retain them beyond the normal end term of service. But don't look for this definition in the film. While one would think Stop-Loss should feel responsibility to discuss the meaning of its title, MTV disagrees. In fact, Pierce's film spends more time contemplating Phillippe's flawless bone structure than the controversial issue at hand. The only unbiased truths regarding the stop-loss policy are squeezed into a five minute face-off between Philippe's character and the shrewdly named, Lt. Col. Boot Miller (Timothy Olyphant).

The rest of the film is given over to the self-pitying odyssey King embarks on in order to evade his charges. King enlists the help of Michelle (Abbie Cornish), the fiancee of his best friend Steve (Channing Tatum). Yes, we thought that was fishy too. As Brandon's best friends and fellow soldiers fall victim to alcoholism and memories of the horrors they witnessed in Iraq, Michelle and Brandon hit the road in the hopes of dropping by the Capitol to see if they can't change a few things around. Hordes of propaganda and abysmal Texas accents later, Brandon finds himself trapped by a system he had joined in the hopes of broadening his horizons.

Phillippe and Cornish prove strong in their rather farcical roles, but are lost to the film's troublesome exclusion of one unavoidable fact: each of these soldiers has agreed to the possibility of stop-loss from the moment they enlisted in the army. "Backdoor draft" or not, John Kerry, learn to read the fine print. Stop-Loss does boast some striking cinematography and several homoerotic brawls Phillippe and Tatum fans cannot afford to miss. Pierce's film makes a melodramatic mockery of its serious subject matter by relinquishing fact for blockbuster romance, a truly irresponsible act in a time of very real war.