Stop-Loss (2008)
Average Rating: 6.3/10
Reviews Counted: 139
Fresh: 90 | Rotten: 49
Stop-Loss is sincere and complex, and features strong performances, even if it tries to cover too much ground.
Average Rating: 6.3/10
Critic Reviews: 36
Fresh: 23 | Rotten: 13
Stop-Loss is sincere and complex, and features strong performances, even if it tries to cover too much ground.
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Average Rating: 2.5/5
User Ratings: 732,512
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Movie Info
After serving his tour of duty in Iraq, a young American soldier who is ordered to return to the front lines as part of the military's controversial stop-loss policy opts instead to go AWOL in a thought-provoking military drama directed by Kimberly Peirce. Sgt. Brandon King (Ryan Philippe) is a decorated Iraq War veteran who once served his country with pride. After his tour of duty comes to an end, King returns to his Texas hometown and attempts to pick up where he once left off with a little
Mar 13, 2008 Wide
Jul 8, 2008
$10.8M
Paramount Pictures
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Cast
-
Ryan Phillippe
Brandon King -
Abbie Cornish
Michele -
Channing Tatum
Steve Shriver -
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Tommy Burges -
Ciarán Hinds
Roy King -
Timothy Olyphant
Lt. Col. Boot Miller -
Victor Rasuk
Rico Rodriguez -
Rob Brown (VI)
Isaac "Eyeball" Butler -
Mamie Gummer
Jeanie -
Josef Sommer
Sen. Orton Worrell -
Linda Emond
Ida King -
Alex Frost
Shorty -
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Stop-Loss Trailer & Photos
All Critics (139) | Top Critics (36) | Fresh (94) | Rotten (49) | DVD (5)
It's the film equivalent of a weary shrug - capturing the national mood at a moment when we'd all prefer some mood enhancers.
Top CriticStop-Loss is not a great movie, but it's forceful, effective, and alive, with the raw, mixed-up emotions produced by an endless war -- a time when the patriotism of military families is in danger of being exploited beyond endurance.
The power of Stop-Loss -- and this is no dumb joke -- is that it shows its hero between Iraq and a hard place.
[A] very worthy film.
Swamped by clichés, continuity problems, stock characters and very good intentions.
Stop-Loss can't quite decide whether to focus on making a powerful statement on a controversial and unfamiliar military policy or on a more predictable drama about the traumatic effect of war on young people's lives.
Mature, violent war drama tackles heavy issues.
Feverish yet bizarrely apolitical, the movie tries to have it both ways and fumbles its outraged and reconciliatory impulses equally
Peirce's sincerity and smarts cannot quite defuse the overall didactic nature of the piece.
La película acierta en el retrato de jóvenes vidas alteradas por siempre tras la experiencia bélica, de ex combatientes enfrentados a retomar una vida civil que extrañaban pero que nunca volverá a ser la misma.
Following the harrowing and superbly made opening sequences of hand to hand combat in Iraq, we can feel the frustrations and the anger through the film, and we sympathise. But the film has a confused message ...
Stop-Loss is a tough film to watch and one that raises issues of concern that travel far beyond the war-torn regions. But whether its message is accurately targeted is for the viewer to decide
Well-scripted and convincingly executed, this raw, super-realistic thriller is made all the more riveting by the sense you get that very similar postwar scenarios are likely currently unfolding all across America.
The movie is well-intended but just misses the mark.
...once it makes its point, it tends to pile on, never making an entirely convincing drama nor an entirely convincing argument.
Like almost all other Iraq war movies, Stop-Loss is as much about the war as it is about making movies--and like its kin, it isn't any good.
The film gets pretty heavy handed in the last third and is weighed down by an inadequate performance.
The reason "Stop Loss" works, unlike its 2007 predecessors, is that it cares more about its characters than it does about making a political point.
[Peirce's] film looks at the fallout of war in lives lost and lives ruined, pain that has a trickle-up effect on our nation's image of itself.
It strokes every personal ideal, whatever it is, rather than aligning itself with its characters and letting the conclusions arise out of who they are.
Though it is very message oriented and a little sloppy at times, I found the subject to be really interesting and the opening war scene will blow you away.
The war in Iraq has itself become the realization of the shameful "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy (it's not just gays and lesbians that are being told to look the other way). Stop-Loss reveals just one ugly aspect of such insidiousness.
An honest vocalization of the inchoate discomfort so many Americans on either side of the political divide are feeling.
But whatever you think about the Iraq war and the people who are fighting in it, you'll be shaken up and moved by Stop-Loss.
Distancing Stop-Loss from other Iraq films by highlighting an American military tactic that has been little talked about, Peirce has crafted a credible but hardly outstanding effort that may disappoint those expecting another Boys Don't Cry.
Stop Loss takes some time out from the argument over the validity of the war to ask a question closer to home - whether the emotional battlefield America subjects its young soldiers to is actually worth it.
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The central dramatic conflict about whether this solider should return to Iraq is a compelling and complex issue, and director Kimberly Pierce treats it with the gravity it deserves, presenting sides that would appeal to most left-leaning peacenics and most veterans of the war. I also think the PTSD was presented well with King being functional most of the time until situations bring back the worst of his time there.
However, Channing Tatum is awful, clearly trying too hard to be a "serious dramatic actor." The film also diverts from the principle conflict, as King visits the family of a dead solider and another soldier in the hospital; it seems like these scenes relate more to Pierce's politically motivated desire to capture all sides of the conflict rather than tell the story. Finally, the beginning of the film is structured like a bad episode of The Real World, as though Pierce realized she was working for MTV and needed to buoy her Gen X kudos.
Overall, this is a good, important story even if the filmmaking isn't all it can be.