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Iraq flick 'Stop-Loss' tries too hard for empathy

Mina Hochberg | amNewYork Movie Critic

March 28, 2008

"Stop-Loss" begins with a sequence like so many we've seen before in cinematic tales of wartime brotherhood. A young band of troops stationed in Tikrit, Iraq, sings a song that resonates with fraternity, virility and duty. Set to their song is a montage that visually demonstrates all the aforementioned values, showing fatigues-clad buddies laughing and jostling around, as our boys are wont to do in war movies.

After this opening, the film swiftly moves on to an ambush attack in a Tikrit alleyway that inflicts several casualties on Sgt. Brandon King's ( Ryan Phillippe) platoon. These first 15 minutes of death and mayhem will go on to serve as a trove of flashbacks that plague the troops through the rest of the film as they try to settle into civilian life in the small Texas town they all hail from. Some are just on leave and others, like King, are getting out after completing their required tours of duty.

The action picks up when King discovers he's been stop-lossed, which means the military has deemed him too valuable an asset to leave behind in Texas, even though his time has officially been served -- a "backdoor draft," as critics have called it. Hell no, he tells his CO, and before you know it, the decorated sergeant is on the run. He soon finds he's not the only stop-lossed soldier gone AWOL.

Director Kimberly Peirce deserves praise for shining a spotlight on a military matter that's become particularly thorny during the Iraq War. She's also enlisted a likeable, respectable cast of actors -- Phillippe, Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt. But by the end, King's stop-loss story is just engrossing enough to make you wish this subject had been covered more rigorously by someone else, like Alex Gibney or " Frontline" or even Anderson Cooper.

Peirce is hung up on sentimentalizing the soldiers' hardships. A well-intentioned move, yes, but ultimately a counter-productive one. The movie oozes with a cloying attentiveness to the men as they try to reconcile their "kill or be killed" war mentality with life back home on the ranch. If it's empathy for the troops she's after, she could have put half as much effort into eliciting it and been doubly successful. Instead, the hype over brotherhood and duty ultimately eclipse the most interesting matter at hand, which is how a patriotic soldier is made to feel when his commander in chief pulls a fast one on him.

Stop-Loss 2 stars Directed by Kimberly Peirce Starring Ryan Phillippe, Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Abbie Cornish