Anti-war with heart

AMERICAN films about the Iraq conflict and the war against terror in general continue to be made despite the fact that audiences, especially in the US, are shunning them.

Abbie Cornish and Ryan Philippe in Stop-Loss

Stop-Loss (MA15+) 4 stars Limited national release AMERICAN films about the Iraq conflict and the war against terror in general continue to be made despite the fact that audiences, especially in the US, are shunning them.

This is understandable in the present climate, but in time, movies such as In the Valley of Elah, Grace is Gone, Redaction, Rendition and now Stop-Loss will, I'm sure, be reappraised as powerful and heartfelt anti-war movies. Stop-Loss is only the second feature made by Kimberly Peirce, who impressed many with her first, Boys Don't Cry, in 1999.

It's a personal story in that Peirce's brother was involved in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it was made only after a great deal of research had been conducted, including interviews with a number of veterans.

The title refers to a dubious policy of the US military whereby volunteers are forced back into the war against their will, on what is apparently an indefinite arrangement, after their agreed term of duty has expired. This is what happens to the film's protagonist, staff sergeant Brandon King (Ryan Philippe), who is first seen leading his men into battle in the streets and houses of Tikrit, a sequence staged in Morocco and handled with powerful immediacy (thanks in no small measure to the potent cinematography of Chris Menges). This sequence underlines why the Iraq conflict is so controversial: the very young, under-educated soldiers, though militarily well-trained, seem completely ignorant of the complexities of the situation on the ground (they talk openly about wanting to nuke Iraq and kill as many Arabs as possible); ambushed in the narrow streets, they have no way of knowing whether the civilians around them, including women and children, are hostile or not, so they tend to shoot first, a recipe for disaster on any number of levels.

After this distressing curtain-raiser, the film, and King, return home. His tour of duty is over and, shattered by what he's seen and experienced, he just wants to try to live a normal life in rural Texas. He's awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star by a visiting politician; he's a hero who's now sick of fighting. And that's when the military invokes the stop-loss policy, forcing the young man to return for an indefinite period to the hell from which he's just escaped. King's response is to go AWOL, to try to reach that politician in Washington and plead for his release. He's joined by Michele (Australian actor Abbie Cornish), who was his best mate's girlfriend, and who believes in his cause.

Peirce's film is impassioned and angry, so it's not surprising it was attacked by conservatives in the US and failed to find much of an audience. Yet it's an important film on a number of levels, and is very well acted (Cornish proves again how excellent she is) and directed into the bargain.