After five years, 4,000 dead soldiers and a few forgotten feature films about the war in Iraq, Kimberly Peirce gives us Stop-Loss, a deeply personal movie that may not top the box office, but just may captivate a population of moviegoers that have not yet been willing to let a topic so prominent in every other aspect of our lives creep into their escape time.

Stop-Loss, Peirce’s first movie since her well-received directorial debut Boys Don’t Cry, is about Sgt. Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe), his soldiers/hometown friends Sgt. Steve Shriver(Channing Tatum) and Tommy Burgess (Joseph Gordon-Levitt)coming home to good ol’ Texas after finishing their tours in Iraq. They are happy to be home, but the war follows them there. Their bouts of drunken rage and relentless nightmares prove to everyone at home that these men are not the ones they knew before. Brandon has barely indulged in the scent from the onion trucks that he missed so much before he is stop-lossed, ordered to go back to Iraq-- a “back-door draft,” Brandon calls it. His composure is shattered. The decorated soldier and selfless leader cannot resign to the wrongful order and goes AWOL. With the support of his parents (Ciaran Hinds and Linda Emond) and the aid of Steve’s fiancé Michele (Abbie Cornish) Brandon decides to go to D.C. and then, when he sees no senator is going to help a fugitive, he thinks about heading for Canada or Mexico. Throughout the entire film, however, we sense there are no real options for him.

The supporting cast shines, also. Cornish fits wonderfully as the tough Texan girl, showing us inner-force and fear simultaneously. Hinds and Emond have relatively small roles as Brandon’s parents, but there is nothing small about their performances; they are tender and painful. Timothy Olyphant is perfectly patriotic as Lt. Col. Boot Miller and Victor Rasuk is a delightfully heartbreaking gem as Rico Rodriguez, one of Brandon’s brothers in arms left without a leg, without an arm and without his sight, but who feels lucky anyway.

At times, the course if the film swerves but never completely. The apparent chemistry between Phillippe and Cornish tricks us into believing that a formulaic romance is about to destroy the film entirety. But, thankfully chemistry does not bloom into love and we are spared any unnecessary corniness. A few lines come off as trite, but not overwhelmingly so.

Many will say (and have said) that the film does not carry the weight and the complexity of the monumental issue it is tackling. Somehow, it does not seem that that impossible goal belongs to Peirce anyway. Peirce wrote Stop-Loss with Mark Richard as a direct reaction to her brother’s presence in Iraq. She illuminates what is personal and delivers something genuine. The decision to infuse soldiers’ home videos into the film is just one testament to that, but an excellent one. Yet, it is that very genuineness that will turn off as many viewers as it may attract.

What gives this movie the capacity to resonate is that it strips away the political and ideological layers until all we can see is a man whose mind is riddled with lives lost, his wounded brothers and his dispirited family. We are not being preached at or assaulted with theories and numbers. Peirce wants to inspire a greater response and dialogue about the war, but she does it by appealing to us on a universal level, by giving us a story no one will fail to understand and few people will be able to leave behind on the theatre floors. It will leave many with more than they expected and some thoughts, feelings and questions they probably wanted to avoid. It is likely that most people will avoid Stop-Loss altogether, but it had to be made regardless.

Sanela Djokovic