Container Top
Homes   Jobs   Cars   Shopping
Search

Events Calendar

EVENT SEARCH:

In This Section


Most Read Stories


Blogs:


Pets:
A Dog Named Christmas – Pet for the Holidays

The Heldenfiles:
Viewing Notes

Patrick McManamon:
Of pass interference and alleged "fake" injuries

Akron Zips:
No. 1 Akron to play Stanford next

Tribe Matters:
Seven players added to Tribe’s 40-man roster

Cleveland Browns:
Audio: Mangini disputes Poteat call, accuses Lions of faking injuries

Kent State Sports:
Flashes travel to Florida Atlantic

Cleveland Cavaliers:
Gameblog: Cavs vs. Philadelphia 76ers

Buckeye Blogging:
Buckeye Football – Present and Future

Varsity Letters:
Gulley to visit Central Michigan in December

All Da King's Men:
The Onion, By Any Other Name…

Blog of Mass Destruction:
Glaring Contradictions

Akron Law Café:
Don't Try to Have Fun if you are Depressed

See Jane Style:
Vintage Chic

Car Chase:
What Automotive Thing Are You Thankful For?

Let's Talk Real Estate:
Faye Dunaway to be Evicted?

Ohio Travels with Betty:
Monique asks how to get tickets for the Polar Express.

Sound Check:
Steely Dan Plays "The Royal Scam" at E.J. Thomas Hall

HRLite House:
Personal Rant – Why I am Glad I live in NEO

Akron Gamer:
Nintendo's Mario endures even as games come and go

Soldier's story 'Stop Loss' takes aim at Iraq, boys who enlist, get redeployed

Director looks at grunts battling inner demons overseas and at home

By Carrie Rickey
Philadelphia Inquirer

It's been nearly a decade since Kimberly Peirce made the Oscar-winning Boys Don't Cry. Her newest film, which she co-wrote and directed, might well carry the same title. It is about boys, fierce and fervent, who have enlisted to fight in Iraq. They don't cry. They joke, rage, seethe, shoot, sustain injury and complete tours of duty — only to be redeployed again.

Stop-Loss, Peirce's vital portrait of soldiers snared by the Army loophole that sends them back to Iraq, has the rhythms and imagery of a generation-defining film. While it would be premature to decorate it as the Best Years of Our Lives or Coming Home of the surge, Stop-Loss carries the emotional force and propulsive drama of the quintessential soldier's story.

Admittedly, the opening sequences of this MTV-produced film look like The Real World: Karbala. Co-opting the style of soldier-shot footage captured on digicams, cell phones and Palm Pilots, the early scenes of Stop-Loss are unpromising and inauthentic as a Parisian popster who tries to imitate Elvis.

Yet Peirce makes it work. Her DIY digital diary of a grunt's life-and-death encounters at military checkpoints and in the crossfire of an urban raid introduces the audience to her principal characters in action.

There's Sgt. Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe), the unifier, squad leader of the boys from Brazos, Texas, effectively the film's superego. There's Sgt. Steve Shriver (Channing Tatum), sharpshooter, its id. Barely surviving an ambush with them are Tommy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the baby-faced newlywed, and Rico (Victor Rasuk), who loses his limbs to a guerrilla's grenade that claims other squad members.

Like Chris Menges' low-key and lucid cinematography, Peirce's direction of her actors is intimately scaled and matter-of-fact. No bid to make a sentimental story or sweeping war allegory. Just a document of the struggles of those fighting the external war in Iraq (or war at home) while battling inner demons.

All the performances are quiet and pitch-perfect, with Phillippe, Tatum and Abbie Cornish (as Michelle, Steve's fiancee and Brandon's friend) the best of the best in conveying moral pain and outrage. As Peirce frames it, separation and war have crossed and shorted their internal wiring. Sparks fly.

Arriving home in Brazos after their tour of duty, Brandon grows misty when he sees the onion fields of home. He's happy to be back, unlike Steve and Tommy.

Without the daily structure of discipline and armed confrontation, they grow restive. They don't know what to do with their adrenaline surges. This leads to a black-comic sequence involving an inventive way to open wedding presents and other, more tragic, outcomes.

Thus when Brandon and Steve go to the base to exchange their gear for separation papers, they learn that they've been stop-lossed. Their different responses — anguish and thoughts of going AWOL for war-hero Brandon and orders-following relief for Steve — occupies the film's second half.

In this politicized country during this polarizing war in an election year, Stop-Loss will generate debate about its political point-of-view. Without pulling any punches, the film is pro-soldier, anti-bureaucrat, war-neutral and deeply, deeply affecting.

It's been nearly a decade since Kimberly Peirce made the Oscar-winning Boys Don't Cry. Her newest film, which she co-wrote and directed, might well carry the same title. It is about boys, fierce and fervent, who have enlisted to fight in Iraq. They don't cry. They joke, rage, seethe, shoot, sustain injury and complete tours of duty — only to be redeployed again.

Get the full article here.


Story tools

Email  Email   Print  Print   Save  Save   Reprint  Reprint   Popular  Most Popular   Reprint  Subscribe

Share this story

AddThis Social Bookmark Button
















Most Commented Stories