The following is from Rotten Tomatoes.

STOP-LOSS Policy – The retention of soldiers in the service beyond their expected term. Using a loophole in soldiers’ military contracts to prohibit servicemen and women from retiring once their required term of service is complete. Also widely known as a “Back Door Draft.” “Stop-Loss,” director Kimberly Peirce’s first film since the Academy Award®-winning “Boys Don’t Cry,” is a topical and emotionally penetrating drama examining a government policy that has affected the lives of more than 80,000 of America’s brave men and women in uniform. The enforcement of the Stop-Loss policy makes each of them walk the fine line between doing their duty and doing what’s right. Sgt. Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe) fought for America. He fought for freedom. He fought for his family. He gave everything and then he came home to begin his life anew. But now they want more. They want him back.

I admit, I had a lot of preconceived notions about this film before I saw it. Before the opening credits rolled, I turned to my friend and said “Oh yeah, this is going to totally suck.” And I was right. For so many reasons. This movie is quite possibly more gay than “Boys Don’t Cry,” and that is saying something. Warning, there are spoilers ahead.

First of all, reserach was horrible. There was no excuse for how piss poor inaccurate it was. Everything in this movie, from the war itself, to coming home, to leave, to being stop-lossed, to going AWOL, is one hundred percent unrealistic. You would think Kimberly Peirce would have at least asked someone “Hey, how exactly would being stop-lossed go down?” instead of just making up what she thinks happens. I guess I had an unfair advantage having been active duty Army for the last eight years, being a former Army recruiter, and having been to war twice myself. If you had never been in the military you wouldn’t have known the difference, but that is still no excuse for how poorly the sequence of events was put together.

Let’s start with the theme of the movie, the Stop-Loss. The main character is supposed to be “getting out,” even though most of us call it “ETSing.” (End Time Service.) But that’s a small gripe. The bigger gripe is how the main character shows up and says “I’m getting out today” the day after their first weekend back from Iraq. It doesn’t work that way. You don’t just wake up the day you get out and just mosey into the S1 and say “Yep, its my last day” like you’re quitting McDonald’s. You have to go through a ten-day to two week process called “clearing” before you sign out of the Army for good. But even if we toss all that out the window, the way he was stop-lossed was absolutely ridiculous and unbelievable. He walks into the Admin offices (where for some reason they are working in dress uniforms, which hasn’t been happening in decades) and the clerk just casually says “Oops, sorry, you’ve been stop-lossed. You’re going back to Iraq in a week.” There is so much wrong with this it is hard to decide where to begin. The Army doesn’t stop-loss individuals and send them back to Iraq one at a time. When a stop-loss is imposed it is imposed on an entire unit. Nobody from the unit can PCS (change duty stations) or ETS, they retrain and are sent to whatever theatre they need to go to, and once they get back they can continue with any PCS or ETS plans. And it doesn’t just sneak up on you at the last second jump out and yell “SURPRISE!” Stop-losses can be seen coming months in advance. And believe me when I tell you that nobody goes back to war less than two weeks after they have gotten home. I served back-to-back tours in Iraq with the 226th Med Log and we had a 8 month break in between them, and that is considered rushing back.

As for going AWOL, the idea that this guy was “on the run” and every law enforcement agency were aggressively hunting him down was pure baloney. I know people who have gone AWOL and nobody really cares. They don’t even look for those guys. The only way to get caught from AWOL is to either go to some totally obvious place, like your parents house, or turning yourself in. The way they see it is that they’ll screw up eventually and get themselves caught, or go up to Canada. If they are going to go to Canada, the Army probably doesn’t want them in combat anyway.

Those were just the most glaring of the numerous inaccuracies in the movie. There are plenty more. Now lets move on the portrayal of soldiers. Apparently Kimberly Peirce doesn’t hold Soldiers in high regard. The movie goes out of its way to paint them all as irrational, impulsive, gun crazy, alcoholic, brain-dead hicks. Come to think of it, that is how the entire state of Texas is portrayed in this movie. I find it hard to believe that a staff sergeant in the United States Army would barge into his commander’s office and say “Fuck the President.” That crap just doesn’t happen. The PTSD angle was pushed way too hard in this movie, to the point of becoming annoying. War is hell and PTSD is a real thing, we all get it. But not all soldiers suffering from this act out their impulses in the extreme fashion that is portrayed in this film. I also find it offensive that anybody who is patriotic and “pro-war” in this movie is portrayed as a dumbass Umericuh-luvvin Bush-Zombie.

It is plain from watching that Kimberly Peirce doesn’t think that this is America’s war, it’s “The President’s War.” Well, coming from an actual war veteran, I would like to send this message to Miss Peirce: Go Screw Yourself! I am getting tired of having the war debate with people who have no clue what the hell is really going on. I am tired of people who have never been engaged in this war, never even put themselves in danger, trying to tell me that “the war is a lost cause” or that “troops or dying for no reason” or “insert-overused-anti-war-slogan-here.” It really is becoming like trying to have a discussion about High School with someone still in Kindergarten, and the Kindergartner gets all high and mighty and thinks it knows what being in High School is really like. So unless you actually want to have an honest intellectual discussion about it and have most of your facts straight, as Miss Peirce obviously didn’t even try to, I really don’t feel like hearing what you have to say.

That’s all I have to say. I’m seriously pissed off now. I need a Coke. Badly.

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