Stop-Loss Reviews
Common Sense Media
Mature, violent war drama tackles heavy issues.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Urban Cinefile
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 ...
Urban Cinefile
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
Movie Metropolis
...once it makes its point, it tends to pile on, never making an entirely convincing drama nor an entirely convincing argument.
Full Review
| Original Score: 6/10
The Trend
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.
| Original Score: 4/5
Atlantic City Weekly
[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.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
WJFK-FM (CBS Radio)
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
Windy City Times
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.
Film Experience
An honest vocalization of the inchoate discomfort so many Americans on either side of the political divide are feeling.
| Original Score: B
MSNBC
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Film4
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
BBC
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Empire Magazine
Strong performances from the young cast make a compelling case that the US govt is failing its soldiers, but the film's a little too much of a blunt instrument.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
ViewLondon
Kimberly Peirce's long-awaited follow-up to Boys Don't Cry is a thought-provoking, emotionally engaging drama that packs a surprisingly powerful punch.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Ozus' World Movie Reviews
Telling antiwar film as seen through the eyes of those patriotic volunteers who fought in Iraq and are now disillusioned.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
Nolan's Pop Culture Review
A powerful film that doesn't pull punches, "Stop-Loss" is the first important film of 2008.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Northwest Herald (Crystal Lake, IL)
Peirce ... dramatizes the problems of the Iraqi War vet with more subtlety than we've seen from other filmmakers.
Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4
Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)
A flawed movie, made with sympathy and integrity...
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Giant Magazine
While the film is far from perfect, Stop-Loss is one of the better narrative features to be made about the Iraq War.
culturevulture.net
... if Pierce is going to create a character who has the deep desire ... to resist the military- then she owes it to Brandon to let him be true to himself.
