Cornish gains attention in contrived 'Stop-loss'
The most intriguing aspect of "Stop-Loss" has nothing to do with the U.S. government's controversial policy of returning weary troops to the Iraq war as many times as it deems necessary.
In this domestic drama, co-written and directed by Kimberly "Men Don't Cry" Peirce, Abbie Cornish's Michele, a tough-as-leather young Texan, assumes the traditional Hollywood man's role as the self-assured hero who can handle guns, bad guys and ideological conflict with cool detachment. Meanwhile, the men around her, all soldiers recently returned from the Iraq war, are varying degrees of basket cases: lost, in denial, or buckling under the strain of warring loyalties.
It's a fascinating reversal, with Cornish taking quiet control of every scene she's in, prompting me to think I'd like to see more of Michele's story rather than the conventional one Peirce tells, complete with stock characters and anti-climactic finale.
Ryan Phillippe, armed with a pitch-perfect Texan accent, plays Staff Sgt. Brandon King, who leads his U.S. soldiers into an ambush in Iraq. During this energized, tension-taut opening sequence, several of his men are killed or maimed, along with several innocent Iraqi civilians.
King returns as a decorated war hero to his small Texas hometown along with his fellow soldier and best friend Steve Shriver (Channing Tatum), a gung-ho, by-the-book military man who plans to marry his longtime girlfriend Michele now that he's back. Another local returning vet, Tommy Burgess (Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a hair-raisingly authentic performance), resorts to alcohol to cope with his demons, both domestic and abroad.
The plot kicks into play when King and Shriver receive orders to report for another tour in Iraq, a process called stop-loss. Shriver accepts the order, even though it means not marrying Michele. King objects, saying that he's done his duty for Uncle Sam and now he needs to take a breather from war. The military disagrees with him, leaving King with no choice but to punch out some military police and go AWOL.
King naively attempts to contact his conservative senator (a brief but memorable role by character actor Josef Sommer) for help. Shriver tracks down his friend and hopes he can convince him to surrender to the military before things get worse. Meanwhile, Shriver's belle Michele hooks up with King on the lam to help him contact other AWOL soldiers living on the down low until they can sneak into Mexico or Canada.
"Stop-Loss" really wants to be the Iraq war reincarnation of "Coming Home," the Oscar-winning 1978 Hal Ashby drama, a conscience-searing examination of how the Vietnam war tore apart not only returning vets, but the people they loved at home.
Where "Coming Home" pushed painful political hot buttons and framed its dramatic impact with urgency and immediacy, "Stop-Loss" feels too familiar and contrived even for audiences sympathetic to the plight of soldiers being forced into extra tours of duty.
Ironically, Peirce and co-writer Mark Richard based their screenplay on her brother's experiences while stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan, where soldiers often created their own cell-phone movie histories of the war. These are suggested in "Stop-Loss" during re-created cell-phone-quality footage showing the war from a soldier's perspective.
These documentarylike snippets provide some welcome visual diversion, but add minimum dramatic impact to the rest of the drama. They aren't totally wasted, however, at least not like Ciaran Hinds' underwritten role as King's vaguely supportive father. A war veteran himself, the elder King seems surprisingly detached from his son's AWOL status, suggesting the bulk of the original role might be trashed in a digital editing system somewhere.
That leaves Cornish's Michele as the only character you'd want to see stop-lossed, as in forced to return in another, hopefully better movie than this.
"Stop-Loss"
21/2 stars
Starring: Ryan Phillippe, Abbie Cornish, Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
Directed by: Kimberly Peirce.
Other: A Paramount Pictures release. Rated R (language, violence) 113 minutes.