Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here.

This is a hard film to defend.

It’s also a hard film to shake.

It’s a mess in a lot of ways, yet there’s an insistent sincerity to it that cuts right through my problems with the narrative. It feels both undercooked and overwritten, but there’s an honesty to it that manages to overcome that. Kim Peirce is a real filmmaker, and when she gets control of her subject and her cast, as she does in many places in STOP-LOSS, the result packs an indisputable punch.

Peirce was originally planning to make a documentary about young soldiers in Iraq, motivated in no small part by her own brother’s decision to join the Army after the events of 9/11. The further she got into her research, though, the more she realized that there was a particular story she wanted to tell dramatically, and her documentary became a work of fiction, the story of a group of friends from a small town in Texas who all went to Iraq together. Brandon (Ryan Phillippe), Tommy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), and Steve (Channing Tatum) served together, and the opening of the film takes place in Iraq. It’s fairly well-shot, and Pierce captures the fear and confusion of combat well. I don’t think she’s going to be first on the list for the next DIE HARD, but she acquits herself on the action.

When Brandon returns to the States, finally done with his tour, he’s excited about picking up with his life. Tommy’s going to be with his wife Jeanie (Mamie Gummer), while Steve’s finally going to marry his fiancée Michelle (Abbie Cornish). Only problem is that Tommy is a hopeless alcoholic now, and Steve’s so traumatized from the things he’s done that he has violent blackout episodes.

Oh... and the government also decides that they’re not finished with these guys yet, and they get stop-lossed.

There seems to be some confusion about what that means in the talkbacks we’ve had on this film so far. As it’s explained in the movie, Brandon signed up for a certain number of tours. His contract is up. He’s finished. But there’s a clause in that contract that says that in times of war or emergency, the government can extend the contract at their own discretion. That’s a really fucked-up clause in the first place, in my opinion, and sort of negates the point of a contract with an out-date. However, any soldier who signs up for active duty knows that clause is there, and there’s always that possibility. The thing that Brandon can’t get past is that there’s not a war or an emergency on. He’s been there. And he believes that whatever that encounter is, it’s not a “war,” and it’s not an “emergency.”

Interestingly, the film doesn’t necessarily agree with Brandon. And you don’t have to, either, to be affected by it. Brandon’s written as a good kid with a real crisis of conscience. He wants to do the right thing, but he also wants to have a life he was promised, the thing he held onto as he was surviving those tours. His moral journey in the film is, more than anything, a way for Peirce to introduce all these difference voices and viewpoints. He goes AWOL and decides he’s going to drive to Washington to talk to a senator he knows and try to talk him into helping out in some way.

That’s the part of the film I have the most trouble with... Brandon is painted at the start of the film as a person of true moral strength, and going AWOL seems to be profoundly out of character for him. One thing I know for sure about myself... I am a giant chickenshit when it comes to the thought of putting myself in harm’s way for any ideal. I have boundless respect for the men and women of the armed forces because I KNOW that I could not do what they do. You will never find me writing negative things about our soldiers, and I have little respect for those who do. I think Peirce respects soldiers as individuals, but I also think her film demonstrates her own personal inability to understand making that sacrifice, and considering how much of a personal stake she has in the situation, I can’t fault her for that finding its way into the film.

What STOP-LOSS ultimately wants to do is ignite a sense of moral outrage in the viewer, and it may do that with some audiences. Where it fails is in its inability to offer up any way to deal with that moral outrage short of going AWOL and breaking a serviceman’s contract with the Army, something that film eventually acknowledges is not an option. As a political argument or as a piece of polemic, STOP-LOSS is not very good. But even so... I found myself thinking about moments in the film days later, and I think that’s where Peirce is good at what she does. She’s great with actors, and the things that connect here are because she manages to get something real and true out of Channing Tatum or Ryan Phillippe or Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It’s because of the haunting image of Victor Rasuk as Rico Rodriguez, blinded and missing his limbs but already talking of his return to service so his mother will get her citizenship when he dies. It’s because of the quiet non-verbal work between Gordon-Levitt and Gummer as their marriage implodes, or because of the way Linda Emond seems to cave in on herself as she watches her son ride away on a bus that’s taking him back to active duty. Those are the things that Peirce gets right, and in those moments, it’s obvious that we need to see more from her as a director. The nine years off between BOYS DON’T CRY and this one may have left her a little rusty on the narrative side, but there’s no denying the quiet thunder she’s able to summon at times, and I hope her next time out, she has a stronger script to work from and nowhere near this much time off.

Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles