Rockhurst Sentinel

It’s a shame when a movie takes on a good, necessary topic, which rightly deserves discussion and proceeds to botch their attempt in every way possible.

I suppose such jobs are delegated to the dependably bad MTV Films, a production company which accomplishes all that its similarly bad television station does on a regular basis: provide a skewed vision of reality, unintentionally highlight various famous peoples’ lack of talent and expose the world to perpetually worse music.

So, when I sat down in my seat at Cinemark Palace at the Plaza and saw those astronauts resting in their seats on the screen with their damn floating popcorn as the song "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor" began to build in the background, perhaps I should have known that this important military issue currently plaguing the country’s armed forces was on its way to a Hollywood Hell in a hand basket.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m discussing the movie "Stop Loss", the most recent film that has attempted to tackle the very real issue of life after Iraq.

At the picture’s center is the military action of being "stop lossed," where a soldier’s "loss" of active duty is "stopped," thus forcing the individual to take on what is most likely their third or fourth tour of duty.

Upon watching the movie’s trailer and doing a little research relating to its topic, the movie seemed fairly promising. Add this to the fact that the film featured two highly talented actors in Ryan Phillippe and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and - call me crazy but I was looking forward to an MTV film. My apologies…

The movie’s main character, played by Ryan Phillippe, has just ended what should be his final tour of duty, coming home from Iraq

Plot point one arrives when Phillippe’s character is stop-lossed, thus initiating his journey of refusal against an unfair and inconsiderate system. The first mistake was made by placing the main characters in Texas, thus forcing the fairly soft-spoken, New-England bred Phillippe to adopt an unfitting accent for the entirety of the film. The second mistake, in my opinion, is that Joseph Gordon-Levitt was not cast as the film’s protagonist. Phillippe’s work is murdered by a bad accent and certainly wanting in the area of intensity.

It is Levitt’s character who is the most interesting to watch, switching with ease from a melancholy, grief-stricken individual, to a violent, helpless soldier who can’t survive the normalcy which life typically offers. The mistakes continue, typified by clichéd dialogue which says entirely too much expository BS, bad unmotivated plot twists and a conclusion which is surely infuriating to any soldier who has ever been stop-lossed.

If you haven’t guessed by now, I’m giving this movie a