Stop-Loss DVD Review
Posted by Jeremy Thomas on 07.08.2008
A war film whose heroes are good intentions and better acting
Directed By: Kimberly Peirce Written by: Kimberly Peirce & Mark Richard
Starring: Ryan Phillippe - Sgt. Brandon Leonard King Joseph Gordon-Levitt - Tommy Burgess Rob Brown - Isaac "Eyeball" Butler Channing Tatum - Steve Shriver Victor Rasuk - Rico Ridriguez Abbie Cornish - Michelle King Terry Quay - Al "Preacher" Colson Matthew Scott Wilcox - Harvey Timothy Olyphant - Lt. Col. Boot Miller Josef Sommer - Senator Orton Worrell Linda Emond - Ida King Ciarán Hinds - Roy King Mamie Gummer - Jeanie Alex Frost - Shorty
DVD Release Date: 7/8/2008 Running Time: 111 minutes
Rated R for graphic violence and pervasive language.
Iraq movies don’t sell. If there’s anything Hollywood should have figured out by now, it’s that. Americans are too tired of the war, which has been oft-called the twenty-first century Vietnam, to want to go visit the subject in movie theaters. This, of course, hasn’t stopped them from trying. From Home of the Brave to Redacted, Grace is Gone to The Kingdom, A Mighty Heart to Lions for Lambs, movie studios have greenlit a host of movies about the War on Terror. Not a single one of them have hit big at the box office, and their quality has ranged from very good (Grace is Gone and the The Kingdom) to atrocious (Lions for Lambs). The war doesn’t appear to be ending any time soon, and that likely means, until the studios realize they’re not making money, the films will continue.
Amidst this backdrop, a film made its way into theaters at the end of March. Covering a controversial policy that’s been famously called “the backdoor draft,” Stop-Loss was hyped with an MTV Films campaign that tried to make the appeal of its attractive young stars the selling point over the film itself. Receiving tolerable reviews (including from yours truly), it still failed to connect to audiences, and left theaters as a box office failure. Now on DVD, it provides audiences who were wearied away by the subject matter a chance to give it a second chance.
The Movie
The film begins with a company of soldiers in Iraq, about to go home to Texas on leave after a long tour of duty. Led by Staff Sergeant Brandon King (Phillippe), the group is shown together during their tour through a series of home movies that depict them living, fighting, and bonding together. As their time grows short, they’re forced into a situation that makes Brandon inadvertently lead them into an ambush in an alley in Tikrit. Some soldiers die and some are injured, and Brandon is forced to go into a building to save his best friend Steve (Tatum). His experience leaves him and his squad, including Thomas Burgess (Gordon-Levitt) emotionally damaged. With this weighing on them, they’re sent home to a hero’s parade and welcomed by Brandon’s parents, Steve’s fiancée Michelle (Cornish), and their Senator (Sommer) who tells Brandon that if he needs anything, to let him know.
Tommy and several other soldiers are going back after their leave is over, but Brandon and Steve are getting out. They’re finished with their tour, and Steve wants to settle down with Michelle while Brandon wants to get back to his life on his ranch with his parents. Before their final date with the military comes however, problems begin to manifest, and it’s clear that the horrors of the war have followed them home. Steve, after a night of heavy drinking, hits Michelle and digs a foxhole in his front yard where he passes out with his gun. Tommy is drinking heavily, and gets thrown out of his new wife’s house. He responds by taking the wedding presents in the back of his car and turning them into targets at a backyard shooting range. Of the three, Brandon seems to be faring the best in the early moments, with the promise of getting back to his life keeping him going. When he returns to turn in his gear and go through paperwork though, he finds to his horror that he’s been stop-lossed, a policy by which units are called back into the service with their contracts being extended against their will. Brandon wants nothing to do with going back, and he tries to clear it up with his commanding officer (Olyphant), who responds by ordering him to the stockades. Brandon escapes and, while his friends and squad-mates flounder and fall apart emotionally due to their experiences, tries to make his way to Washington D.C. with Michelle’s help to talk to his senator for help.
The story itself, and the policy that drives it, is a controversial one. The stop-loss policy has been debated by politicians for a while now, and that is a debate for another time. Writer/director Kimberly Peirce, for whom this is the first film since 1999’s Oscar-winning Boys Don’t Cry, is quite open in the film about her contempt for the policy, drawing on her brother’s war experiences and interviews with over 150 people who have experienced stop-loss. The film is obviously critical of the policy, but its strength is that it never condemns the troops. Peirce’s respect for the men in uniform is obvious, and she treats all the soldiers in the film as people and not just killers—even Olyphant’s Lieutenant Colonel, who is ostensibly the face of the military policy, conveys that he doesn’t agree with the policy, no matter what he’s saying. Peirce takes the time to focus on these individuals, and makes it clear that they’re not bad men, they’re merely traumatized by the extreme circumstances that they were placed in as a by-product of war. Her only flaw in the characterization is that she piles far too much mental instability on them in such a short time, and it stretches credibility. Tommy is drinking heavily and has rage and depression issues, Steve and Brandon have post-traumatic stress disorder and flashbacks, and more. A more subtle approach to their mental states would have made for a much smoother story.
Luckily, she has some very skilled actors helping her out. Ryan Phillippe, Channing Tatum, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are three highly underrated actors, often cast in less demanding roles due to their appeal to the young female subsection of movie-goers. Gordon-Levitt is perhaps the most respected of the three, with acclaim for his performances in independent films like Brick and the otherwise forgettable The Lookout, and his performance as Tommy is a nicely-layered one which projects an uncontrollable rage at the death of his best friend in Tikrit just simmering under the surface. Tatum is a surprise, but a pleasant one, as he tries to be the stoic one who can’t find a place where life is safe for him outside of the uniform. It’s Phillippe who delivers the knock-out performance, though, as Brandon. He’s always been massively underrated, all the way back to his Cruel Intentions days, but he’s been showing in recent years how much acting skill he truly has with lauded roles in films like Crash and Breach. His performance as Brandon is intensely fascinating, as he takes a role that could have easily been botched by over- or under-acting and finds that perfect balance. He layers guilt and rage just under the surface, and struggles to keep things together in the face of his friends and world falling apart. When that negativity does burst out, such as an attack on him by car thieves, he doesn’t lose a shred of credibility, and he makes Brandon’s PSTD entirely believable. Abbie Cornish, in a less rewarding but no less important role, provides the balance when Brandon goes nuts. You can see the disgust in her eyes at what the war has turned these men she grew up with and considers family into, and she tries to hold Brandon together so he can get free, even while her relationship with Steve falls apart. Special credit must be given to Victor Rasuk who, in a small but important role as wounded squad mate Rico Rodriguez, provides perhaps the most poignant scene in the movie.
The film falls apart a little in the third act, unable to hold its tone when Peirce and co-writer Mark Richard can’t seem to figure out where to go with it. A romantic subplot is teased between Michelle and Brandon that is entirely unnecessary and, thankfully, never realized. And there are some plot points that stretch credibility (such as Brandon’s escape from the base), or scenes that seem overwrought (such as the climactic fight at a funeral. The slick production style occasionally seems out of place for the smaller kind of film that Peirce wants to make, contrasted against the rougher footage made like the home movies). What’s important is that the spirit of the film holds strong throughout, and it is enough to carry it through the weaker moments of the film.
Film Rating: 7.0
The Video
Shot in two alternating styles—simulated home-movies and a more standard 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen—the video transfer of Stop-Loss is adequately effective. While the documentary-esque bits suffer just a bit due to intentional blurring and jerky camera, it’s a desired effect that doesn’t distract too much from the story. The widescreen presentation is clear and crisp, with pretty natural-looking colors and no visible distortion. Any flaws are purely stylistic and not due to the transfer, and there’s no issues with blacks or edge enhancement.
Video Rating: 7.0
The Audio
The audio track, presented in the standard 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound, is incredible. From the explosive action in the beginning to the quieter moments that dominate much of the rest of the film, it’s as good of an audio track as one can ask for. Everything is very nicely leveled, and John Powell’s score never distracts from the film, only enhances it. Everything is nearly lossless, and there is nothing that can be complained about here at all.
Audio Rating: 10.0
Special Features
Commentary with Director Kimberly Peirce and Co-Writer Mark Richland: A mostly-dry but informative commentary track, Peirce controls the majority of the conversation. Not surprisingly from a commentary track by the writers, there is a lot of discussion of the formulation of the script and the rewriting that took place on-set. Peirce does talk a fair amount about the production also, and provides a lot of anecdotes about casting and more. What comes across most strongly is that the writers had a sense of responsibility toward making the movie authentic, and they did everything they could to ensure that.
The Making of Stop-Loss: (20:57) This fairly exhaustive featurette offers everything you imagine from a behind-the-scenes making of promotional short. Writer/director Kimberly Peirce talks about the origins of the film and how it was inspired both by what her brother had gone through in his army experience and watching videos the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan had made, which also influenced the visual style of the film. The comprehensive research they did on the policy is detailed, with some small clips of interviews they did with soldiers who had dealt with the stop-loss policy, and they discuss the research trip they took to Paris, Illinois, where they found much of the inspiration for their parade scene. Discussion is made about the shooting of the Tikrit scene that opens the movie, which was shot in Morocco. The actors have some good moments here talking about their personal feelings about the movie; Phillippe talks about the lengths they went through to make everything as legitimate as possible, how they felt they had a duty to make the film honest, and how his family’s military history made him feel a responsibility to the same. Unlike some featurettes of this style, the actors seem honest in their respect for Peirce and the movie, and the short does exactly what it should do in making us understand the movie better.
A Day In Boot Camp: (10:03) This short is exactly what the title says: a day in the boot camp training the actors were put through. It’s clear early on that they weren’t given a tourist’s guide to boot camp, so to speak; the cast is given the full, realistic experience, including physical training at 5:30 am, combat training, the full works. One bit shows one of the cast members showing up for drill a couple minutes late and being given push-ups to do. Phillippe has the best line of the featurette, where he says that as much as one tries to be a big Hollywood actor, living in Los Angeles and being an anti-war liberal…when the gun is in your hand, that’s power. The actors come off very grounded and real, and they have no illusions of what they’re doing. Gordon-Levitt acknowledges that they’re not even scratching the surface of what actual soldiers are going through and he respects that, though it is giving them what they need, including the camaraderie.
Deleted Scenes: (18:34) Like many sets of deleted scenes, this is a lot of stuff that was cut from the film strictly due to a lack of driving the story ahead, and Peirce’s optional commentary acknowledges that. Most of it is character-building stuff that may not have propelled the plot, but is still enjoyable stuff to watch that may have filled in some holes, and I would have liked to see some of it in the film. The relationship between Brandon and his father is explored in one, and another shows Brandon getting extremely uncomfortable when the father of a soldier who died thanks him for his service. That scene is perhaps the deepest of the cut material, as Brandon is clearly regretful for surviving when others didn’t, but doesn’t want to express such to a man whose son did. Two scenes of Brandon and Michelle actually reaching D.C. and having no luck would have filled in one hole, but falls too heavily on the political commentary side, and a failed attempt at trying to stay at a Veterans Support Center due to Brandon’s AWOL status was nice but unneeded. The only scene that really seems weak is the last one, which makes the unnecessary romantic subplot a little clearer.
Special Features Rating: 7.5
The 411: Stop-Loss is, perhaps, one of the best Iraq war movies to date, with the exception of Grace is Gone. This is not to say it's not flawed--it certainly is. But by focusing on the soldiers and treating them with respect, Kimberly Peirce manages to create an environment where the young actors involved are able to make the story shine, even through the sketchier and melodramatic moments of the movie. A strong video transfer and superb audio track combine with a lovely set of special features to make this a film well-worth checking out.
