Stop Loss

Last night I saw the movie "Stop Loss" starring Ryan Phillippe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Channing Tatum. If you haven't heard of it, that's because it's not due out until March of 2008. I hadn't heard of it either until I got invited to the screening. I'm going to try to write about the movie without going on too much of a political rant, but that's going to be hard based on the content of the movie.

For those of you who don't know what a stop loss is, it's when the government essentially backdoor drafts soldiers by keeping them for longer than they originally signed up for. This film is about a guy who returns from Iraq and is supposed to be done (Phillippe) and then he gets stop-lossed and told he has to go back. Obviously, he's not happy about this so he runs. He wants to find this senator who he knows and try to get the senator to help get him out of it. He quickly realizes that's not going to work though, and that his only two choices are to go back or to flee the country. I won't ruin the ending of the movie for you.

The whole movie is very grim and intense. It starts out in Iraq when Phillipe's character essentially leads his squad into an ambush while pursuing some attackers. It's a really gruesome beginning. The soldiers who make it home in one piece are severely mentally f***ed up. And they don't all make it home in one piece. Some of them don't make it home at all.

Once they're home, the intensity doesn't back down. Tempers rage, alcohol flows through their veins pretty much the entire time, and a lot of trouble ensues. Most of them are just home temporarily and know they will be going back. But a few of them, like Philllippe and Tatum, are supposed to be returning home for good. Phillippe plays the leader of the group, some of whom have been friends since childhood. He is stricken with guilt over leading his men into an ambush. Gordon-Levitt plays a soldier who's life is basically the army. He is coping with the death of his best friend (who died in his arms during the ambush in a really gruesome way) and turns to alcohol, gets kicked out of the house by his wife - which only makes his alcohol problem worse - and then gets in trouble with the army for his conduct.

I would say the best performance was actually Channing Tatum as Phillipe's best friend. Tatum once again unleashes a powerful performance. He was great in "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints" as a tough kid from the wrong side of the tracks who is desperately in need of guidance and who makes mistakes but is really a good guy at heart. This role is similar. He's definitely still a tough guy (I mean, with his macho, chiseled features, I don't know if it's possible to cast him as anything else) who needs guidance and makes mistakes. He is also a good guy at heart, trying to hold together his group of friends - who are really like his family when it comes down to it - as it falls apart. I would say one of the most powerful scenes of the movie for me was when, after lots of building tension that leads to a physical fight between Tatum and Phillippe, Tatum rather suddenly bursts into tears. Seeing that big, macho guy break down and sob was like being punched in the gut, especially when 30 seconds before he had been furiously wrestling with Ryan Phillippe.

One interesting thing about the film was how parts of it were shot from the soldiers' POV (as if they were shooting it on home video cameras or even just digital cameras). It's interesting how technology has changed so much that now the soldiers can kind of document the wars for themselves (this is particularly interesting to me because I am currently working on a documentary project about war photographers). It was also interesting because the reason the filmmaker, Kimberly Pierce, chose to do this was inspired by her brother, who was a soldier in Iraq and was showing her his pictures/video from Iraq. Pierce talked about how when her brother was in Iraq she talked to him on IM almost every day too.

Part of what made this movie so disturbing for me personally was that her brother played an integral role in helping her make this film. She wanted to represent soldiers accurately and at first he wouldn't help her because he was essentially like "no one understands unless they go through it." So she was going to go through it. She was going to go to Iraq and spend time with soldiers there. That's when her brother decided to help her make the film - because he didn't want her to go to Iraq because it's not safe. And it doesn't matter how much security you have with you, no one is safe anywhere. So he worked with her on the film and she interviewed a lot of soldiers that she met through him. And the fact that this film was made with the help of soldiers makes it disturbing to me because that means that this very bleak film is an accurate depiction of at least some soldiers' experience with Iraq and it's not just what some outsider wants to think soldiers go through. It's not a film that was made to demonize the war by someone who has no connection to it - and I wouldn't even necessarily say it demonizes the war, but it certainly paints a grim picture. It's a film that was made in collaboration with people who have fought in the war, and who signed up to fight in the war and to "defend their country," and some of whom probably still support the war even after everything they've gone through. I realize I can't say that therefore the movie applies to all soldiers. A lot of soldiers who see the movie might not have the same perspective because the experience is probably different to everyone who goes through it. But it sounds like the director spoke to a number of soldiers, so at the very least, her depiction represents some soldiers and is trying to be accurate instead of just an angry liberal anti-war movie.

At the end of the movie were statistics about soldiers who've been stop-lossed for this war, and they're pretty scary. I wish I had written them down. I want to say it was something like 1/6th of the soldiers who've fought in Iraq have been stop-lossed. But don't quote me on that. I could be wrong. But the point is, a lot of soldiers have been stop-lossed and it's just not fair. For one thing, stop losses are only supposed to be for times of war, and according to President Bush we "won that war" a long time ago (remember that victory celebration on the aircraft carrier?) and despite the fact that he uses the term "war on terror" a lot, he has tried to make it seem like we're not actively in a state of war. But they are doing it because they can't get away with a draft - they know the country would revolt if they started drafting. This is basically a draft anyway though. It takes any plans these guys might have had for their lives and says "sorry, you get to put all that on hold and go risk your lives." For some people, it's multiple tours and multiple years risking their lives. And while some will argue "at least they signed up in the first place," I argue that it's almost worse this way because these are the people who have already had to risk their lives and are now being forced to do so over and over. They signed up for a certain amount of time, they went and they risked their lives, they did their duty and they should be rewarded for that - not punished by being essentially held in the army against their will. It's not fair that the government can just change the course of these peoples' lives, especially when most of those doing the decision-making haven't fought a day in their lives and neither has anyone they know in many cases. The film also shows the hopelessness of those who've tried to fight the stop loss - how there really is no way for soldiers to get out once they've been stop-lossed and they really have no choice in the matter whatsoever. There have been lawsuits but they've all failed. No judge will go up against the war and no one in the government will help the soldiers trying to get out. The only way out is essentially to flee the country and never see your loved ones again - and that's not a very good option for obvious reasons.

The movie also highlights the chaos in Iraq - how there's no method to the fighting and no one knows who's who. That's scary. It's scary enough that no one really seems to know what we're fighting for, but when you add this new "urban warfare" crap and you aren't even really sure who you're fighting or how to fight them... There really just was no organization in this whole war from the very beginning and it's pretty appalling.

I had some issues with some of the stuff in the film - how Phillippe's character being on the run was kind of glamorized at times for example (he goes all James Bond at a few points taking on multiple armed people with just bare hands). Or how quickly wounds seem to heal in this movie and how that kind of muddles the timeline of how long a period this is taking place over. But overall, I would say it's a worthwhile film to see. All of the actors were great. And hopefully the film will inspire people to take action. I would say it's important to see to be an informed person.

And now, to lighten the mood a little (maybe?), or at the very least, to keep the music-theme of this blog going, I will post a song. It probably won't actually lighten the mood because it's not really a happy song, but it fits the current theme and it is one of my favorite songs lately:

Combat Baby [mp3] - Metric - "Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?" (iTunes)

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