Four thousand Americans and counting have died in Iraq, and the litany of unsuccessful films about that part of the world -- "The Situation," "Redacted," "Rendition," "The Kingdom," "In The Valley of Elah" among others -- is growing as well. Do not add "Stop-Loss" to that list. "Stop-Loss" is a film that does it right.
The story of a young American soldier played by Ryan Phillippe who resists an order to return to Iraq, "Stop-Loss" covers some of the same territory as those other features. The difference here is a quality of propulsive emotional intensity that pushes us over rough spots as it drives us insistently forward. An intensity that must be credited to director and co-writer ■ Kimberly Peirce.
Peirce hasn't directed since 1999's devastating Hilary Swank-starring "Boys Don't Cry." She is clearly a filmmaker who doesn't take things lightly, someone in search of such a ferocious level of commitment to her subject that she can "feel it was taking over my whole life."
Working here with co-writer Mark Richard and lighted up by the Iraq-combat experiences of her half brother, Peirce has found a subject in the way the war in Iraq is tearing apart many of its soldiers, in combat and when they return home. This is a wrenching story of men at arms who cannot find peace outside the military circle, who return to civilian life on the horrific edge of violence and despair.
In this "Stop-Loss" has a certain amount in common with "Boys Don't Cry." Peirce again concerns herself with men and violence as well as with individuals conflicted over gender roles trying to work out what society demands of them.
Also, like that earlier film, "Stop-Loss" has a formidable performance at its center in Phillippe's portrait of squad leader Staff Sgt. Brandon King. An actor whose most recent work ("Flags of Our Fathers," "Breach") has been his best, Phillippe has been finding himself with characters who display an edge, men whose coolness doesn't quite hide a tormented interior.
That intensity is shown to its best advantage in "Stop-Loss' " opening segment, set in the Iraqi city of Tikrit. Here, partly through soldier-shot home videos, we meet Sgt. King and the men in his squad, including powerful Steve Shriver (Channing Tatum), King's best friend since third grade, and slender Tommy Burgess (the gifted Joseph Gordon-Levitt).
