Not antimilitary or anti-soldier, anti this war

Judged as a drama and choosing to ignore (only for the moment) the controversial political context, Stop-Loss is a powerful; well-pitched film with effective performances by its stars.

As the film's protagonist, Ryan Phillippe (seen here with director and co-writer Kimberly Peirce at the film's premiere) plays a good man and a leader of men who tried to do his duty as it was told to him, and then finds the people controlling the game have changed the rules.

I'd say he does better work than I would previously have imagined him capable of. But come to think of it I know him mainly as a pretty-boy, I don't really think I've seen him act in very much.

I know I've never seen Abbie Cornish act before. She plays a sharp Texas woman--y'know, the kind I love to talk about--so well I was mildly taken aback to learn she's actually Australian.

A childhood friend of Phillippe's character, she tries to help keep him from being forced back into service. The film gracefully acknowledges a sexual tension between the two (which if you believe the tittle was consumated off the set), but is too smart to let the characters sink into its suds.

Channing Tatum, though I feel compelled to mock him for his name, plays a character that's a good argument to those who insist this film is anti-soldier. He's the longtime best friend of Phillippe and fiancée of Cornish who finds good for himself in the service.



I submit that in a really anti-soldier movie Tatum (seen above with Cornish) would have been a cardboard ogre, but he's not. He's an imperfect man trying to balance loyalty to his friend, duty as he sees it to his country, and love of his fiancée.

He does what he thinks is best, even as it brings him into conflict with those he loves. Which is one of the secrets of good drama, the trouble with balancing these things is that there's really no way for it to come out even.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character might have benefited from more screen time. There's depth to his performance, but the character just kind of...slips away. This might be the point. But, I will be curious to see if there's more of him in deleted scenes on the DVD.

It's wrong to assume, as some have, that this movie is antimilitary or anti-soldier. Antiwar? Possibly. But who the hell isn't antiwar at a time when our "commander-in-chief" is so unpopular he's booed at baseball games?

Anti this particular war and the fucks sending men and women back to be maimed or killed (while we choose to care about Obama's "bitter" comments)...absofreakinglutely.

But antimilitary and anti-soldier? No. No, I don't think so. Not unless you choose to see the world in black-and-white; the simplest possible terms.

This movie and its characters are more complex and subtle than that. So are, I have to believe, the men and women fighting this war.

I musn't forget to mention Ciaran Hinds, who was in the last movie I saw in the theatre, too, and gives perhaps the most subtle performance of the lot as Phillippe's father.

He's a man who loves his son and of course doesn't want to see him hurt--but he also believes in the male fraternity of the military.

Again, the three "C's" that make up a good "D": Character, Conflict and Complexity. His thoughts, and what the final judgment of him should be, are open to discussion.

The script is comparable to, and arguably better than, (deep breath) Aaron Sorkin's Charlie Wilson's War, which I've come to believe was compromised by the need to serve star egos. Stop-Loss admirably steers clear of tying up every loose end, or the sucker's happy ending.

So: Why did it lose out at the box office? Theories are flying around. Mean-spirited conservatives like those who got us into this war (at little or no risk to themselves) think it’s because the film, like others recently about the Iraq war, isn't sufficiently toe-the-line patriotic. I think James Rocchi has a better bead on it.

But I'm absolutely sure the film deserved better, and hope it will be rediscovered in time.

We're asking too few to do too much for too little; that's what the real problem is, and that's the lesson which Stop-Loss underlines. And how is that anti-soldier as seen by any but the most knee-jerk of Bush supporters?

This movie loves its soldiers, and feels for them.

It is probably not insignificant that it was co-written and directed by a woman (screenplay with Mark Richard).