Review of Stop-Loss (2008) by Scubasteve Walter M — 05 May 2013

This movie has its heart in the right place, but didn't quite generate the outrage or anger that I suspect it was going for. The title comes from the U.S. military's practice of cancelling a soldier's retirement because of manpower requirements to fight the Iraq war in the '00s. Brandon (Ryan Phillippe) is a local Texas boy who enlisted at the nearby Army base and served two tours in Iraq. The movie opens with a chilling battle scene where he leads his unit in some harrowing and deadly urban combat. Back home, Brandon thinks he's retiring, but is "stop-lossed". He goes AWOL and begins a road trip to Washington, D.C., to convince his Senator to let him leave the Army.

In the meantime, some of Brandon's buddies from his unit are having problems of their own while they're on furlough back in Texas. I think it's these secondary stories that steal the momentum from the stop-loss plot line. While they're all disturbed young men suffering from the traumas of war, and we feel for them all, they're not stop-lossed (Brandon, too, has his post-traumatic demons to battle). Every time we cut from Brandon on the road to the boys back in Texas, the dramatic tension eases and our level of care drops.

The climax comes from a event that was pretty easy to see coming, and it causes a major shift in Brandon's journey (and caused me some confusion about just how quickly people can travel between New York City and Texas) and leads to an ending that is inevitable and unsatisfying, even if it may truer to life than a more dramatic conclusion might be. The movie leaves you feeling drained of hope, but not upset enough to want to complain to someone about it.