6.3 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
Decorated Iraq war hero Sgt. Brandon King makes a celebrated return to his small Texas hometown, believing that his tour of duty is over. When the Army orders him back to Iraq under the fine print in his enlistment contract, the action tests everything he believes in.
Starring: Ryan Phillippe, Abbie Cornish, Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ciarán HindsWar | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
English SDH, French, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 3.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
Stop-Loss began with the enlistment of director Kimbely Peirce's younger brother after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Deployed to Iraq, he kept in almost daily contact with his older sister by Instant Message. With the aid of her brother's correspondence, Peirce saw the war through a soldier's eyes. She also gained access to videos shot by soldiers of themselves and each other and sent home to their families. They moved her both as a family member and a filmmaker. In 2005, Peirce began touring America to interview returning soldiers and those to whom they returned. Some she talked to in person, others by phone. In the process, she discovered the military's "stop-loss" program, which relied on a provision of the standard enlistment contract that was being applied more frequently as the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan continued longer than initially expected. The provision allows the military to extend an enlistee's deployment beyond the originally stated term and, in time of war, extend the period of enlistment until after the war is over. Stop-loss has been called "a backdoor draft" (a phrase that Peirce incorporated into the film). Estimates vary, but anywhere from 58,000 to 81,000 troops were returned to Iraq or Afghanistan for additional tours under the stop-loss program. Recognizing the inherent drama in the plight of a soldier who comes home breathing a sigh of relief at having survived, only to be told he has to go back, Peirce and co-writer Mark Richard (Huff) began writing a script. As they progressed through an estimated 65 drafts, the writing partners expanded their story to encompass everything they had learned—from soldiers, from their families, from the military itself—about the experience of returning home after combat in the Middle East. They wanted to explore, as honestly as possible, the challenges experienced by the much-altered returnees and the loved ones eager to welcome them home. Some of these issues are so common that the military gives classes to wives and fiancées on how to deal with the men they used to know. Stop-Loss was released by Paramount's MTV Films division, and like every other film dealing with the war on terror and its aftermath (at least, until Zero Dark Thirty), it did poorly at the box office, despite strong reviews. With U.S. troops now out of Iraq and leaving Afghanistan, the film is due for a second look.
Throughout her commentary, director Peirce notes the substantial contributions of Oscar-winning cinematographer Chris Menges (The Killing Fields ) to the look of Stop-Loss, whether through his insistence on creating lighting that appears to come from sources inherent to the scene (e.g., a huge canopy of tiny lights strung below the ceiling of a bar where the soldiers celebrate their first night home) or his fluid camera movements (especially during the opening firefight). Unlike Menges' earlier films, Stop-Loss was finished on a digital intermediate, and Peirce says that considerable effort was made in post-production to use color as an instant visual cue distinguishing between soldiers' videos and the film itself. Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray of this Paramount catalog title has presumably been sourced from digital files, and it is excellent. Clarity, sharpness and detail are consistently fine throughout, except in the soldiers' videos, where they fall off somewhat, deliberately so, to convey a homemade quality. Black levels are solid and deep, which becomes especially important in critical night scenes. The color palette varies widely, beginning with the washed out brightness under the Iraqi sun, followed by the warm, welcoming hometown hues of Texas but shading into the unsettling and almost pulpy intensity of the soldiers' waking nightmares and the back alleys where King and Michelle find themselves hiding from the law. The disc's average bitrate of 23.84 falls within Warner's usual range. Stop-Loss has demanding passages of frenetic action, but it also has long sections of quiet conversation. The compression balances the two for maximum efficiency, and the Blu-ray image appeared to be free from artifacts. (Messages that I have received about previous Paramount titles released under the Warner licensing deal for the U.S. and Canada prompt me to reiterate that Paramount provides the transfer/digital capture and the extras, while Warner does the compression, authoring and menu design.)
Stop-Loss's 5.1 sound mix, presented here in lossless DTS-HD MA, rises effectively to the big moments, especially the opening firefight, with an aggressive surround mix that immerses the viewer in the different environments to which the soldiers must adjust. The chaos of a fast-moving street battle is punctuated by gunfire, RPG explosions, concussion grenades, falling rubble, flames and yelling voices, and the mix places these sounds throughout the listening space. A similarly enveloping but very different kind of sound can be heard when the main characters return home to a big celebration and parade, and again in the giant bar where singer Ricky Calmbach leads a Texas swing band. The sound mix becomes more interior and subjective as the film's focus narrows in on Sgt. King, but the soundtrack (supervised by Randall Poster) still has room for well-chosen musical selections. (On the commentary, Peirce describes how one key scene didn't work until it was set to Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Born on the Bayou".) Dialogue is generally clear, and the underscoring by John Powell (Face/Off) has the driving force of a suspense film.
The extras have been ported over from Paramount's 2008 DVD of Stop-Loss.
Every war generates a cinema specific to its circumstances, but film is much better at expressing emotional experience than intellectual analysis. The plight of individual soldiers and the gap between the rush of patriotic fervor that inspires service and the day-to-day realities of fighting and its aftermath have been a consistent source of inspiration for filmmakers precisely because the experience is so personal. King Vidor's The Big Parade didn't attempt to examine the causes of World War I or assign responsibilities for the slaughter; Vidor was more interested in showing the war as it was experienced by three very different soldiers who became unlikely comrades. William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives didn't undertake an analysis of the rise of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan or the dangers of post-war Europe; it only cared about what happened to three American soldiers who came home from the fighting. Stop-Loss falls squarely in this tradition, but the public didn't show for it, which is a shame. It's a powerful, moving film on an important subject. Highly recommended.
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