Stop-Loss film review

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STOP-LOSS

When Staff Sgt. Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe) is informed by his superior officer that instead of his imminent and long-awaited return to civilian life, by order of the Commander in Chief he is being shipped back to Iraq for another tour of duty, he exclaims angrily, "With all due respect, f*** the President." It's no doubt the sentiment shared by the majority of the 81,000 troops in the Iraq war who have been stop-lossed. The term refers to the military practice of preventing a soldier leaving the forces once his term of enlistment expires. In essence the military renege on their contract with recruits, invoking what is euphemistically referred to as a "backdoor draft," forcing them to fight on.

As if Bush hadn't betrayed his troops enough by sending them to die in a needless war, he compounds this moral crime by committing what is in essence a legal one. It's this injustice that writer and director Kimberly Peirce highlights in the effecting and provocative Stop-Loss. Originally conceived as a documentary, Peirce was personally impacted by the war when her younger brother enlisted and went to fight in Iraq. It was his tales of colleagues who had been stop-lossed that prompted her to use the policy as the central theme to her anti-war movie.

After King leads his men into a deadly ambush, the experience makes him even more anxious to leave the army. Upon returning to his Texas home, along with his two childhood friends Steve Shriver (Channing Tatum) and Tommy Burgess (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), King receives a hero's welcome. As they all begin to take their first tentative steps back into civilian life, it's clear the war has had a psychologically traumatic impact on the three men. But as King settles back into domesticity, he attends what he thinks to be a routine discharge, only to be informed that he has been stop-lossed.

Enraged by the army's betrayal and facing a dreaded return to Iraq, the once proud and loyal soldier goes awol. Aided by Shriver's fiancé, the tough Michele (Abbie Cornish), King looks for a sympathetic and influential ear but instead comes upon others in his situation that are looking to challenge the stop-loss policy.