Vanguard

Issue date: 3/31/08 Section: Entertainment

If you think our country does not have a draft for the war in Iraq, you are wrong. "Stop-Loss" director Kimberly Pierce executes exposing the underhandedness of our government's treatment of soldiers with a realness factor that has rarely been reached.

When Sgt. Brandon King, played by Ryan Phillipe, returns home to his proud-small hometown in Texas, he and his friends that fought alongside him try to reclaim their civilian lives. As happy and eager as they were to be back home, returning to life post-war proves more difficult than anticipated. The friendship between King and his childhood best friend, Steve Shriver, played by Channing Tatum, is in danger because of differing reactions to the war and ideas about duty. The soldiers portrayed by Tatum and Joseph Gordon-Levitt face keeping relationships intact after being gone for so long.

Going back to Iraq was the last thing King wanted to do, but the Army orders him to serve another tour through a loophole called stop-loss. Since there is no official draft and no continuous supply of soldiers, the government has devised a way to keep cycling the same soldiers back to fight in Iraq. It is a sort of "Back Door Draft" the government is using to ensure there are plenty of soldiers to fight.
In order to get out of the order, King travels to Washington, D.C. to see a senator who promised to help him in any way he could, but that was before he went A-wall. Along the way, King runs into another soldier who has been stop-lossed. King tells the soldier his plan, and he replies King might as well write a letter to the editor while he is at it.

Ryan Phillipe's performance is striking and dead-on. He gives King a soul with something to fight for, which, ironically, is not the war. Abbie Cornish, who plays King's Bonnie-and-Clyde-getaway partner and his best friend's fiancée, reveals the pain faced by the girlfriends, fiancées and wives of the soldiers fighting the war.
The fighting scenes are shocking and ruthlessly real. Children and families are being killed in their homes-finally, we see the war is being fought in the living rooms of the people of Iraq and not on a battlefield. Our soldiers and the people of Iraq have something in common; there is no escaping the war. Even when the soldiers leave, their lives, as well as Iraq, will never be the same.

When you go see this movie, and you must see this movie, do not forget the tissues. It is shocking and upsetting, but necessarily so.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools