Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
4/17/08
“Criticism is
a mode of autobiography”
-Oscar Wilde
I try
my best to post reviews of new movies within a few days of seeing them:
with luck, even the same day. But there's been a logjam lately:
yes, I've been busy on some other projects, but there's also been this
review I've been a bit hesitant to write. Like roughly 70% of Americans
(depending upon the poll), I know someone who's been to Iraq, and in a
few weeks, he'll be headed back. We're not close, he's the boyfriend
of a friend, but the connection still changes the face of a war I've never
supported to start with. IEDs, Suicide Bombers, Post-Traumatic Stress:
all fixtures of the news, but also distant in that way the media has of
making everything seem like fiction. But as I consider the reality
of these threats and dozens more like them, I am confronted with Stop-Loss,
Kimberly Peirce's in-your-face attack on The War and its' effects on the
people who fight it and those close to them. The movie disturbed
me, shook me up, and left me pretty thoroughly depressed. But in
its' own muckraking way, it's quite brilliant, and in a country discovering
that those handy Support the Troops magnets come off your car just as easy
as they went on, it should be required viewing.
Sgt.
Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe) has seen no end of horrors during a tour
of duty that saw many men under his command killed or wounded. But
that's over now: he and his unit have returned to their Texas hometown
to try and pick up the pieces of their lives. That includes his best
friend Steve (Channing Tatum), who'll finally get a chance to marry his
girlfriend Michelle (Abbie Cronish). Things aren't so great upon
their return: called upon to give a rousing recruiting speech at
a rally celebrating their return, Brandon can only babble wistfully about
the smell of onions, and all the returning troops find shaking off the
constant danger of their mission easier said than done. A drunken
Steve hits Michelle, digs himself a foxhole on the lawn and goes to sleep
with a gun clutched to his chest. And their friend Tommy Burgess
(Joseph Gordon-Levitt) can't seem to stay out of trouble. But these
struggles to readjust are nothing compared to the shock that's coming:
on the morning Brandon expects to be finally, officially discharged, he's
instead given orders for a new tour of duty under the Stop-Loss provision
of his enlistment contract. It allows the military to keep its' soldiers
active indefinitely in a time of war. Foolishly believing the offer
of a Senator (Joseph Sommer) who told him to look him up if he ever needed
anything, Brandon goes AWOL in hopes of making his case to be allowed to
go home. Hoping to keep him from hurting himself, Michelle comes
along for the ride. As they travel from Texas to New York City, they
see the many faces of the war, from the family of one fallen comrade and
a hospital visit to another horribly wounded one to a group of deserters
trying to stay off the grid. As the heat continues to rise back home,
it becomes clear that the only way Brandon can escape his endless duty
is to leave behind everything he's ever known.
Kimberly
Peirce took nine years to follow up her breakthrough directorial debut
Boys Don't Cry, which won Hilary Swank her first Oscar, and it's
easy to see the raw emotion that drew her to tell this story. Stop-Loss
isn't a movie for people looking for “balance”: while it celebrates
the loyalty and honor of our men in uniform, it also sees them as a fatal
flaw easily exploited by a War Machine everyone wants to support but no
one really wants to look at (note how quickly the revelers who come out
to welcome everyone back shy away from hearing any of the actual stories
they have to tell). You can practically see the filmmaker clawing
for higher and higher ground from which to shout “Look what we're doing
to these people!” And we should look: we should have to.
If the goal is worth the cost, then so be it, but at least be honest about
it.
Like
Spielberg cribbing beats from his earlier populist blockbusters in Schindler's
List, Peirce isn't afraid to couch the story of the returning soldiers
in horror movie terms. It's not all that hard to imagine the same
plot beats applied to a story of astronauts returning from Mars infected
with a strange virus that messes with their minds. But it's a choice
that feels right, because the experience of the combat soldier and how
it affects their lives upon their return IS alien to those of us who wind
up the window while driving through “the bad part of town”. “What
happened to these guys?” Michelle asks an unseen phone caller at one point.
She never gets an answer, nor do we, but we can see it in action.
Surely Brandon's given enough, hasn't he? How much more damage will
another tour do? We all hear the headlines about the soaring suicide
rates among troops serving multiple tours, but I don't see many of the
ever-dwindling part of the population clinging to their early support of
the conflict volunteering to do their part.
As
you can no doubt tell, Stop-Loss is so intense, so emotional that
it's pretty much a mirror held up to your own views of the war. Those
in support will likely call it heavy-handed and unfair. But even
those opposed are as likely to want to look away as to embrace the movie's
operatic despair. Peirce has no answers: How do we get out?
If not Brandon and his friends, then who? And in the absence of answers,
all we've done, maybe even all we can do, is just keep running the same
grim machine. It's a movie designed to stir outrage, but in a climate
where not a single Presidential candidate mentions the Stop Loss issue,
good luck finding an outlet.
Partisanship
aside, the performances are tremendous. I never cease to be amazed
at Phillippe's evolution from teen movie pretty boy to All American Everyman,
and this is probably his best performance. Brandon is a good leader,
a good friend, but he's also deeply damaged and hopelessly naive.
His upbringing, his training and his code all come up empty when it comes
to dealing with his situation. Cornish impressed me as the only actor
trying to earn their paycheck in A Good Year, and here she's at
another level, totally convincing as the small town girl also at a loss
to apply what she knows of the world to the scenes playing out before her.
Tatum, known to most as a shirtless coat rack in Step Up, shows
real dramatic depth: Steve is on the opposite side of the equation,
desperate to find a way to make his deadly talents into a life. One
way or another, he's a man who'll never leave the military. Gordon-Levitt,
the former child sitcom star making a major resurgence as an adult character
actor, is heartbreaking as the hopelessly messed-up Tommy. The song
he's singing in his final scene will strike some as a low blow, but to
me it was absolutely perfect. There are lots of good actors in smaller
roles as well. This is shaping up as the year of Ciaran Hinds, adding
the inarticulate dignity of Brandon's gung-ho father to his seemingly endless
range. Another favorite of mine, Timothy Olyphant, is excellent as
their commanding officer, with no choice but to tow the hard line against
any opposition to his authority.
I can
pretty much guaranty you're not going to have “a good time” at Stop-Loss.
It is, literally, the kind of movie where one character presses another's
face against a tombstone and screams “You're next!” But if it seems
extreme, perhaps it's because it comes in extreme times, saying something
everyone knows but no one seems to want to say. “There's a fucking
ELEPHANT in this room!” it shouts and, well, you've seen the box office
returns. |
