Man on the run

By Steve Persall, Times Film Critic
In print: Friday, March 28, 2008

Channing Tatum, left, and Ryan Phillippe play best friends trying to cope with return to civilian life after serving in Iraq.
	[Paramount Pictures]

Story Tools E-mail this story Contact the editor Print this story Comment on this story Social Bookmarking [+] Digg Facebook Stumbleupon Reddit Del.icio.us Newsvine

ADVERTISEMENT Abbie Cornish and Joseph Gordon-Levitt also star in Stop-Loss, which opens today. Related Links '21' beats the odds Run Fatboy Run: The wit is fit

Kimberly Peirce's Stop-Loss isn't the threat to national security that some conservative wags would have us believe. It doesn't glamorize military desertion or say anything negative about the Iraq war that can't be gleaned from public opinion polls.

Stop-Loss also isn't the definitive movie statement on the war, or the political war resulting at home. Just like the previously divisive Vietnam conflict, we need to wait for a conclusion before that movie can happen.

This doesn't prevent Peirce from patterning her film on Vietnam movies eulogizing soldiers and damning that war. There's a bit of The Deer Hunter in the way main characters are introduced, some Platoon-style battle tension, some Coming Home in scenes set in an Army hospital, and crazed-vet episodes from too many films to list.

Stop-Loss figures Iraq has only one exit strategy, and that is to run.

The choice is made to seem right for Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe), a Texan who may as well have been born on the Fourth of July, who enlisted because it was appropriate after 9/11. As a sergeant, he is a stoic leader of troops, in one instance leading them into an urban firefight that killed several comrades in arms.

Brandon's tour of duty is nearly finished. Getting home safely doesn't quell his guilt, or the dependency of two unstable, lifelong friends who served alongside him.

Steve Shriver (Channing Tatum) is a hot-tempered type who drinks too much, beats his girlfriend, Michelle (Abbie Cornish), and digs a foxhole in the front yard. Tommy Burgess (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is so hollowed-out by war that his wife immediately dumps him, so he also crawls into a bottle. The characters are drastically antisocial; they may have come unhinged before warfare.

Tommy and Steve are merely excuses for Brandon to do some illogical things as Stop-Loss proceeds. The first is going AWOL after learning he is being "stop-lossed," a Catch-22 that will send him back to Iraq. Does he go to Canada or Mexico? No, he heads straight for Washington, where he expects his congressman to bail him out of this jam. Brandon takes along Michelle, meaning Steve will show up sometime and he won't be happy.

The road-trip milieu allows Peirce to stage two moving sequences: Brandon consoling a dead soldier's family and visiting a maimed "brother" (Victor Rasuk). Yet before the first emotional punch is complete, Brandon has his own psycho-vet episode. Before the second one is finished, we're wondering how a military hospital isn't aware that a deserter is among them.

An escape plan begins, then is dropped when Brandon gets bad news from home. That sends Stop-Loss into a final act so heavy-handed and eventually implausible that the movie ends with a whimper. Peirce doesn't have the courage of her convictions to finish her mission.

Steve Persall can be reached at persall@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8365. Read his blog at blogs.tampabay.com/movies.