Stop-Loss (R) ** | Stand-up effort loses its focus

BY RENE RODRIGUEZ

rrodriguez@MiamiHerald.com

FRANK MASI / PARAMOUNT PICTURES

Channing Tatum, Ryan Phillippe, Alex Frost, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Rob Brown play soldiers in Iraq.

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The problem with most movies about the Iraq war thus far -- the reason no one went to see Redacted or In the Valley of Elah or Home of the Brave or Lions For Lambs -- is that they've favored messages over characters. If you want to make a film about the soldiers fighting overseas, make sure it's a story about them, not the political beliefs you want to share with the audience.

Stop-Loss, the second movie by director Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don't Cry), is an earnest and well-meaning but disappointing failure -- a heartfelt ode to soldiers subjected to the military loophole that can extend their enlistment without warning, even on the day they are scheduled to come home, and send them right back to Iraq for another tour of duty.

That's exactly what happens to Staff Sgt. Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe), who wins both a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for his bravery on the battlefield, but is told the day he's due to return to his family in Texas that he's been stop-lossed and ordered back into the breach. King defies his orders and goes AWOL with the help of Michele (Abbie Cornish), the fiancé of his disapproving fellow soldier Steve (Channing Tatum).

The central subject of Stop-Loss should have been the effect the policy has on soldiers like King, who feel personally betrayed by the last-minute ''second draft'' but also suffer guilt about abandoning their fellow soldiers still fighting overseas. But the screenplay, written by Peirce (based in part on the experiences of her half-brother) and Mark Richard, squanders most of its screen time on cliched and pointless tangents, from the doomed veteran who starts drinking too much when he returns home to the formerly happy-go-lucky soldier now bedridden in an Army hospital.

Those may be tragic and very real situations facing an increasing number of Iraq war veterans, but Stop-Loss lets them down by portraying them in a generic, MTV-slick manner that only makes you aware of how obviously the filmmakers are manipulating the audience.

The best moments in Stop-Loss are its opening -- a harrowing battle sequence in Iraq that illustrates this war's unique horrors and perils in heartbreaking detail -- and its understated ending. Some might dismiss the resolution as a cop-out, but it is really a moving testament to the immense bravery of soldiers who have seen their friends die on the battlefield -- and willingly risk their own lives long after they are no longer forced to in hopes of preventing it from happening again.

Cast: Ryan Phillippe, Abbie Cornish, Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Victor Rasuk, Timothy Olyphant, Ciaran Hinds

Director: Kimberly Peirce

Screenwriters: Mark Richard, Kimberly Peirce

Producers: Kimberly Peirce, Mark Roybal, Scott Rudin

A Paramount Pictures release. Running time: 113 minutes. Vulgar language, bloody war violence, gore, adult themes. Playing at area theaters.