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Stop-Loss

Ryan Philippe explored the difficulties of a WWII marine coming home in Flags of Our Fathers: a touch of shell-shock; guilt at no longer being on the front line; and shame at the disparity between the propaganda machine's version of the war and the reality that he knew.

Philippe is coming home again as Sgt Brandon King in Stop-Loss, this time from the war in Iraq - we get a taste of that conflict in the movie's opening salvo, a firefight in the streets of Tikrit that claims a couple of Sgt King's men and leaves him seriously shaken. A couple of weeks later he and two comrades are met by flag-waving crowds in the Texas town in which they grew up.

King's term is up, and he's had his fill of fighting - asked to speak to the crowd, he's so choked up to be home he almost breaks down. His buddy Steve (Channing Tatum) steps up to get back the event back on gung-ho message. Steve doesn't really know what he's going to do, but somehow the night's celebrations end with him trading punches with his girlfriend Michelle (Abbie Cornish) and digging a foxhole out in the front yard, hugging his gun for company.

Mark (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is just as screwed up. He gets so royally drunk he doesn't know what he's doing and his fiancée turfs him out of the house. Next morning all he can think to do is use their wedding gifts for target practice.

Director Kimberly Peirce has been AWOL since her impressive debut Boys Don't Cry nine years ago. These early scenes have a similar feel for blue collar good ol' boy community, the push and pull of guys together. Like Boys Don't Cry, Stop-Loss is concerned with identity and belonging. Steve, Mark and Brandon aren't crazy enough to want to get killed in Iraq, but to varying degrees they're lost without their uniform. The army gives these young men much more than a job. It's a source of pride, even faith, and it's an escape from the limited opportunities open to them in civilian life.

Nevertheless, Brandon's mind is made up. He wants out. But the cost is far greater than he anticipates. The day his contract expires he is horrified to be stop-lossed by his CO. According to the fine print the military can compel troops to serve another ten years beyond the original term of their contract, at the pleasure of the Commander In Chief. (According to the movie, at least 81,000 have been "stop lossed" since September 11, 2001, and no figures for last year have been issued yet.)

The way Brandon sees it, it's like his get out of jail card has been revoked at the prison gates, and he's been sent back to death row. And this is how they treat a war hero with a Purple Heart and Bronze Star!

He steals a jeep and takes off - convinced that he can pull some strings with a sympathetic senator. In the meantime, though, he's AWOL and facing imprisonment if he's caught. It's the beginning of a long ride to nowhere. Unfortunately, this also marks the point when the air begins to seep out of this scrupulous, anguished, but frustratingly stop-and-go offering.

Stop-Loss wears its bleeding heart on its sleeve, but falters on Philippe's limitations as an actor and a central character who never snaps into focus.

The script feels faithfully researched but dramatically old hat. On the road, encounters with the grieving parents of a fallen comrade and a badly wounded survivor from the original Tikrit episode (a standout performance from Vic Rasuk) further our sympathy for the vets, but don't advance the story or shed much light on Brandon himself.

Philippe's committed performance still comes up short. He doesn't pack the weight to make Brandon's hair-trigger violence as dangerous as it's supposed to be - a run-in with three petty criminals is pure Hollywood - and too often the actor seems to be flailing for effect.

The gifted Australian actress Abbie Cornish has several strong scenes along the way, articulating the movie's nagging, problematic question - "What's happened to these guys?" - but we're never quite convinced why she's tagging along with her ex-boyfriend's buddy. The movie is crying out for a romantic entanglement between them, but Peirce resists it, just as she is careful to couch any overt criticism of the war in the language of the troops themselves ("We should bomb them back to bible times�" being the prevailing sentiment).

In the end, Stop-Loss is a conscientious and honorable effort to fight the good fight on behalf of the boys (and girls) in the firing line - even those who can't face another go around or have trouble living with what they've seen and done. But as a movie it can't seem to break free from the creeping sense of hopelessness that infects this conflict, and which audiences seem in no rush to embrace.

Tom Charity tom.charity@lovefilm.com

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