With the American death toll recently surpassing 4,000 -- and no end in sight -- Kimberly Peirce's "Stop-Loss" strikes a poignant chord at a particularly hopeless moment in the War on Terror. The director's first since her Oscar-winning debut "Boys Don't Cry" (1999), the film is a gritty depiction of America's youngest generation of veterans.
"Stop-Loss" attempts to earnestly portray its characters, but the film seems oversaturated with renegade Rock 'n' Roll glamour and American muscle-car grease. After barely pulling his squad through an ambush in Tikrit, Brandon finally returns to Brazos, Texas only to find he's been stop-lossed -- the military has invoked a back-door policy and intends to send him straight back to Iraq for another tour. But at this betrayal Brandon snaps -- the first of the cast to do so, though each soldier in the film eventually reaches their breaking point. He goes AWOL, hitting the open road with his best friend's sun-kissed fiance Michele (deftly played by the beautiful Abbie Cornish).
Open and enticing though the fugitive road to Canada or Mexico may be, Brandon soon finds that it leads nowhere feasible. Life away from his family, friends and hometown proves impossible; his only option is to return to combat.
Perhaps I'm prejudiced by the distributor (MTV Films), but "Stop-Loss" feels more like a prolonged music video than an actual cinematic experience. The narrative of the film is driven entirely by its political issues, which, worthy though they are, give the film an allegorical quality. With heavy metal, faux home-video clips and derelict hotel rooms abounding, the movie falters in what I perceive as its attempt to seem contemporary to our generation. Ms. Peirce finds stronger footing in its character's relationships, disintegrating though they might be -- due to the violence these soldiers can't seem to exorcise.
In "Stop-Loss," the only thing more prevalent than beer is blood. The movie's most scathing and unforgettable anti-war argument is the havoc these soldiers wreak in their own homes. Back from Tikrit, the men have no way of relating to anything without violence: On the first night in town there's a bar fight and domestic abuse, Steve even digs himself a shallow grave and lies out all night, clutching his gun. The soldiers can hardly speak or argue without throwing punches: When Tommy's wedding sours, he spends the afternoon playing target practice with the gifts (Joeseph Gordon-Leavitt transcends his type-cast underdog role convincingly as the alcoholic Tommy). "Man, I'm gonna miss blowing shit up," Steve says, at the thought of "getting out" of the army.
The film makes few bones about portraying the Iraqi tragedy: This is a movie about American civilians. In the first scene of the film Brandon mistakenly kills an entire family of Iraqi citizens -- mother and children included -- but when he later lists the deaths he feels responsible for, it's only his four fellow soldiers he can't get out of his head. Ms. Peirce smartly takes on a more humble scope, depicting only what the war means in the American homeland. There's a divorce, an engagement broken off, a suicide. None of the soldiers can reintegrate into the society they thought they were fighting to protect -- in the end, they all ship back to Iraq and to the life of violence that Steve still manages to call more "safe." The film's wrenching ending of disconnected glances and oh-well shrugs depicts the isolation of the American soldier -- a word that seems to leave a permanent mark. Once a soldier, always a soldier -- literally, for those who are unfairly stop-lossed -- and figuratively, for these college-age kids who can no longer define themselves in any other setting.
