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Stop-Loss is an odd mixture of authentic and implausible moments. It is because of the fact that the movie does have authentic moments that I feel bad in giving it the thumbs-down, but unfortunately, they're not enough to earn it a solid recommendation.
I'm still waiting for the day when we'll get a truly great film that focuses on the military conflict that the U.S. currently faces and its consequences, but perhaps we'll just have to wait till the war ends and several years pass for a great film to be made about it, much like it's been the case with other wars that have been portrayed on film. Last year, we had The Kingdom and In The Valley of Elah. Since the former was a more mainstream film that had a wide release, it was inevitably dumbed-down, which decreased its effectiveness by a lot, despite a nice helping of ironic insight in its final scene. Meanwhile, In The Valley of Elah had a much more limited release, and although it was anchored by a great lead performance, it was contrived, it often felt like a CSI episode, and worst of all, it tried waaaay too hard to jam its ideas down the viewers' throats. Though both films lacked in different departments, I'd say both were equal in quality (I gave a 5 to both). Stop-Loss ranks pretty much on the same level. At this point, I would still have to say that Jarhead is the best recent film to tackle this subject matter (and it's already been almost 3 years since that came out).
Ryan Philippe and Abbie Cornish give subtle, affecting performances, and I like the fact that the film focuses mainly on the road trip these two take yet never veers into the territory of romance. The incredibly hot Channing Tatum spends a few minutes during the first half of the film in briefs, and that's a VERY welcome sight, but unfortunately, the caliber of his acting isn't on par with that of his body. It's hard to cringe as you watch him struggle in all of the scenes in which he's supposed to display emotion. This is a problem particularly when his character, Steve, goes to see his buddy Brandon (Philippe) and his girlfriend Michelle (Cornish), who are in a motel room, and confronts both of them, asking Brandon to return to duty and his girlfriend to come back home. This scene requires a lot of him, as he has a lot of dialogue, and this is meant to be the point at which we start to notice the ideological differences between Brandon and Steve, so it is a very important moment, and it sucks that Tatum doesn't give us what we need. Props to Philippe for holding his own, though, because the scene certainly requires a lot from him, too. And actually, it's not as if Tatum can't act and/or display emotion - just watch A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints. So, there's really no excuse for his less-than-stellar performance here.
It's hard to know what to say about Stop-Loss because it's inconsistent in its attempts to make this feel like a real, tangible story. Sometimes it comes across, and sometimes it doesn't. A drastic, unexpected turn of events takes place at the very end of Stop-Loss, and when this happened, I thought "Oh, cool, here we might have something that'll make this a good, insightful movie". What was the problem? This final moment in the film is overblown so much, with unnecessary long shots on people's faces to scan their reactions, and with a musical score that bleeds self-importance, that it takes away from the effectiveness of what would've worked better as a more subtle conclusion.
5/10
