Stop-Loss

Stop-Loss is a harrowing film about the process whereby, due to a shortage of soldiers, the U.S. government is able to use the stop-loss clause in a soldier’s contract to send them back out on duty.

The film opens with typical soldier camaraderie as they spend their time joking with one another, but this light-heartedness is short-lived. For out on tour banter quickly turns into a tense situation, when cars speed toward the soldiers and their stop point. The sound of gunfire in the distance instantly puts the soldiers on edge, as they must pursue insurgents who shoot at them as they speed past. The pursuit leads them into a domestic area and stalking through the claustrophobic space of a side street, we notice just how vulnerable these soldiers are. Their faces etched with worry, and their voices straining to shout commands as missiles and shots are fired, their comrades killed beside them.

Such opening images of the realities of war are quickly taken over by the cheers of the parade put on in honour of the soldiers' return home. However for Brandon (Ryan Phillippe), Steve (Channing Tatum) and Tommy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), adapting to home is deeply problematic as they struggle to come to terms with the trauma of war. Their problems are magnified when Brandon, who is due to get out of the army, is ‘stop-lossed’ and informed that he must go back out on tour by the end of the month.

Ryan Phillippe gives an intense and demanding performance here as the troubled Brandon. A decorated soldier bound to duty and his friends, Brandon desperately does not want to return to Iraq and so goes AWOL. He sets out on a journey, with the help of Michelle, Steve’s fiancée, heading to Washington to see a senator who always offered him his help. However Brandon must confront his personal trauma and his fellow soldiers, as Steve and Tommy need him back home.

Stop-Loss is a deeply moving portrayal of the truth behind American soldiers' lives. It does not seek to offer a critique on the war in Iraq, but rather documents the harsh realities and implications of serving a government that seems to be failing its troops.

Sophie Petrie