PRINTMovie Review: Stop-Loss
April 3, 2008 | 12:00 a.m. CST
Kimberly Peirce, director of Boys Don’t Cry, initially thought of making a documentary about stop-loss, a procedure the U.S. Army uses to extend soldier contracts and halt current losses in military personnel. Peirce wanted to draw on her brother’s experiences in the Army but eventually opted for a fictional account. The result is Stop-Loss.
Stop-Loss follows Sgt. Brandon King after he receives a Purple Heart. As he feels the effects of stop-loss, the movie attempts to develop his friendship and brotherhood with Steve Shriver. Shriver, played by Channing Tatum, is racist and sexist; he becomes deeply offended when a fellow soldier suggests he can’t control his own woman, but viewers should be offended when he suggests throwing a bomb on Iraq and “sending them back to the Bible days.” Shriver’s actions offer him up as a bad guy in the movie, and these include his interactions with his fiancee, Michelle. There is no reason to believe he cares for his childhood sweetheart, who seems to share more warmth with King.
For the most part, the characters are underdeveloped. The dehumanizing effects of war are shown through some soldiers who seem excited to kill Iraqis, to whom they refer as “Hajjis.” When King breaks down and speaks out against the president, he is doing so as a soldier who is sick of death. He is supposed to represent a victim of the war, and here is where Peirce draws parallels to Vietnam. Her work tries to depict a war that went out of hand in Iraq as well as America, but it ends up saying very little.
Whether one thinks this movie is too anti-war or too pro-miltary, Stop-Loss tries to appeal to both conservatives and liberals by reminding people that friends, sons and brothers are in Iraq and Afghanistan. It appeals to its audience’s patriotism by beginning and ending the sequences of clips with rhetoric such as “We will never forget,” and “In loving memory of our brothers.”
Perhaps the film would have felt more cohesive if Peirce used more documentary-like footage. Although the movie uses lots of editing to create montage sequences with soldiers at war, the technique is not implemented throughout the movie, and the transitions from raw footage to narrative film are difficult. In one montage, the Drowning Pool song “Bodies” introduces footage of Texan soldiers and hits viewers hard with a collection of combat footage. The song is rough, anthemic rock, which is supposed to rev up violence and appeal to a younger generation, but the song is rather disturbing given the circumstances of war and seems to glorify the act of killing in combat. It, like the movie, ultimately feels disrespectful.
Vox Rating:
