What’s that great line from No Country For Old Men when Tommy Lee Jones’s Sheriff is asked if a multiple body massacre is a mess? “If it ain’t, it’ll do till the mess gets here” When it comes to stories about America’s ill advised war in Iraq, it’s hard not to think of it is the real deal You won’t have to wait for another to arrive. It’s a bloody unequivocal mess, no matter how much Orwellian spinning has gone on over the past five years in the nation’s media to convince us otherwise. If you’re a pessimist –or some would argue a realist, you may think this particular botch is forever, an intractable wreck that’ll only result in larger catatostrophes down the line. If it is, it’ll keep expanding till the other messes get here.
Stop-Loss, Kimberly Peirce’s first feature since her much heralded 1999 debut (Boys Don’t Cry), arrived in the marketplace last week like one of its weary soldiers. This would be yet another wounding tour through America’s seeming indifference to Iraq war dramas. Did anyone expect it to be a big hit? Most articles neglect to mention that only certain types of movies are critic proof. Those are the big-ticket genres like superhero films, action extravaganzas, animated flicks, big star driven comedies. When it comes to dramas aimed at adults are any critic proof?
So never mind the box office or the press-led fantasies that nobody will ever be interested in this type of movie. Every war that America has ever been involved in has led to filmmakers examining it. Every war leads to responses in art (and commerce-driven art, too). Each war has its throwaway films and its masterpieces. If you trust the critical consensus, Hollywood just hasn’t produced the one yet.
That said, Stop-Loss is definitely of the moment, an honest vocalization of the inchoate discomfort so many Americans on either side of the political divide are feeling. The film tells the collective story of soldiers returning to their Texas hometown after a particularly grueling tour in which they lost friends and fellow soldiers in a bloody ambush. The film mostly focuses on the leader Brandon (Ryan Phillipe), his best friend since boyhood Steve (Channing Tatum), troubled Tommy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Rico (the always compelling Victor Rasuk who really needs larger roles, pronto) who was badly injured in the ambush before they were shipped home, losing limbs and vision.
The first scene, set in Iraq, is gruesome and riveting and expands the range of Peirce. Who knew that she could direct action sequences as well as the incisive human drama she handled so well in her debut? But like many films that begin with a violent memorable confrontation (take Saving Private Ryan for another example) the immediately successive sequences can feel rote in comparison. The soldiers return to a homecoming celebration, some are on leave and some like Brandon and Steve are getting out for good, and are warned of a series of things they mustn’t do while on leave, such as getting DUIs, beating up civilians. If you’ve seen more than a few movies in your life, you can guess what they immediately do in the next sequence.
The film doesn’t waste any time letting you know that their tours under fire have wrecked these men. They’re violent, confused, often drunk and have difficulties adjusting to civilian life. The main drama of the film emerges from the stop-loss clause, commonly referred to now as the ‘backdoor draft’ in which volunteer members of the armed forces (essentially all of them) can be pulled back into duty without their consent because of an ongoing war. Brandon, ready to hang up his gun, doesn’t take well to the news and goes AWOL.
Stop-Loss sometimes feels directionless as its narrative zigzags between unravelling soldiers, none of them making smart life choices and all of them trapped by terrible circumstances and personal demons. Ryan Phillipe is often criticized as an actor for his lack of fire onscreen but a nondistinct fuzzy character here hampers him. But whatever its flaws, Stop-Loss seems to come by them honestly. If the soldiers sometimes act like clichés, well aren’t their problems typical? If these men sometimes seem maddeningly dense about the war they’re in, or lacking in critical thinking skills when it comes to the politics that got them there, if they seem lost as to how to get out now that they’re in… well, it’s not hard to make the argument that that’s a rather honest snapshot of what everyday Americans are going through, too. Stop-Loss is frustrating at times, fuzzy when you want it to be precise and the ending is unsatisfying but then… this story is still in progress. This soldier's tale is an intermittently moving snapshot of Americans who are only just beginning to wake up. They’re still in a fog but they don’t like what they’re just beginning to see.
Is Stop-Loss a good film? If it ain’t, it’ll do till the masterpieces get here.
