Stop-Loss
Posted on July 8, 2008 at 8:00 am
A young soldier who has come home from Iraq is forced to rethink his ideas about heroism and patriotism when he is “stop-lossed” — informed that instead of leaving the Army he has been involuntarily assigned to another tour of duty. Brandon (Ryan Phillippe) and Steve (Channing Tatum), his best friend since high school, were greeted with an old-fashioned hero’s welcome right out of a Norman Rockwell painting, with a parade and a warm handshake from their Senator, who says his door will always be open to real-life American heroes. They speak proudly about “killing ’em in Iraq so we won’t have to kill ’em in Texas.” But when Brandon finds out that the government has the right to send him back, he goes AWOL and leaves for Washington with Steve’s estranged fiancée (Abbie Cornish), hoping the Senator will find a way for him to stay home.
The real-life Army euphemism “stop loss,” sometimes referred to as a “backdoor draft” for the all-volunteer army, takes on multiple meanings as the film progresses. Brandon’s efforts to stay home are his own stop loss program. When he first comes home, he seems to be the most stable and responsible of the returning soldiers. But he crumbles quickly when ordered to return. For him, leaving the Army is the only way to stop further loss of his ability to return to a normal life. His efforts to resist only create conflicts with the people closest to him.
Same “stick it to the man” story. Same stoic, emotionally damaged but still a fighting machine (mean, yes; lean, not so much) who can take on a hundred guys with guns because he is so well trained and so pure of heart.
(The Man = abusive cops), followed by 
(The Man = Viet Cong and corrupt politicians) and 
(The Man = Soviets in Afghanistan). Twenty years later, there are still bad guys that only the last true morally righteous person on earth — or an aging movie star looking for an audience — can take on. For tonight’s performance, the part of The Man will be played by the military junta that controls Burma.
It is not easy to take a wealthy socialite, a powerful Congressman, and a CIA agent, have them played by three Oscar-winners, two who are genuine box office gold, and make them look like the underdogs, but in this “extraordinary story of how the wildest man in Congress and a rogue CIA agent changed the history of our times” (as put in the unusually accurate book subtitle), that is what they are.