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Stop-Loss (2008) DVD Review
Stop-Loss (2008) DVD Credits:
Stop-Loss (2008) Directed by:
Kimberly Peirce
Stop-Loss (2008) Written by:
Kimberly Peirce, Mark Richard
Stop-Loss (2008) Cast:
Ryan Philippe, Abbie Cornish, Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ciarán Hinds, Timothy Olyphant, Victor Rasuk, Rob Brown
Stop-Loss (2008) Released by:
Not available at this time
Region:
1
Stop-Loss (2008) DVD Release Date:
7th July 2008
Our Rating: Extras Rating:

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Stop-Loss (2008) Synopsis:

About American soldiers who face being sent back to the front lines in Iraq because of a controversial statute invoked by the Defense Dept.

Stop-Loss (2008) DVD Review:


Nearly ten years have passed since Kimberly Peirce’s feature-film debut, boys Don’t Cry, which is most memorable for Hilary Swank’s gender-bending performance that garnered the film an Academy Award and a great deal of attention, but Peirce only directed an episode of The L Word before she finally made her second feature with Stop-Loss. There is a great deal of pressure with a successful film, but this pressure only increases with time, and Stop-Loss is a sloppily constructed film, apparently proving newcomer writer Mark Richards might not bring the same strength that Peirce was so lucky to have with Boys Don’t Cry.

After all of this time it is understandable that Peirce would return to familiar territory of the small-town atmosphere, occasionally even dipping into the seedier areas and unsavory southerners that are far too familiar to those in the Nebraska town of Boys Don’t Cry. Stop-Loss crosses several states from Texas to Washington D.C., but Peirce only seems to imagine them in the seediest parts of town wherever they are. When atmosphere is not the focus it must have been the performances, because Ryan Phillippe’s true-blue-Texan performance is so dead-on that it somewhat overpowers the rest of the film and Australian actress Abbie Cornish easily draws her words out like a true cowgirl.

Phillippe plays Sgt. Brandon King, a soldier whose tour of duty has ended and is on his way back home with his close friends and fellow soldiers, Tommy Burgess (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Sgt. Steve Shriver (Channing Tatum). They are all conveniently sent into battle together, and we are allowed the experience of one encounter with the enemy go bad before their return. This portion of the film resembles the many cliché moments used in dozens of other films about soldiers returning home, including the all-too-expected wife beatings and suicides. This is just a side-track to what the film is really about, which is Brandon’s fight to stay out of the army when they tell him he has been stop-lost. This simply means that he has been backdoor drafted back into the army, regardless of whether he wants to go.

Deciding to fight the decision Brandon takes off on a road trip to try and receive help from a senator with the help of Steve’s fiancé (Cornish). Paired with the attempt to make a point on the injustice of the stop-loss policy, which technically should only be employed during war, Stop-Loss is also greedily attempting to draw in the MTV generation with shameless music video-type montages that glorify the violence and provide as many manipulatively emotional moments out of the audience as possible. It is sloppy and shameful filmmaking that is only saved by dedicated actors perfectly cast. My only concern is that Tatum will never break away from his bad boy persona onscreen. If he can’t I’m afraid he will face the same fate that Vin Diesel eventually did.

The DVD contains a commentary with the co-writers Peirce and Richard, but it does nothing to justify the trite plot twists. There is also a featurette, showing the rigorous training the actors went through for the shoot, a making-of featurette, and eleven deleted scenes.

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Stop-Loss (2008) DVD review written by: Ryan Izay

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