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4 articles from 2008

11 July 2008 12:37 AM, PDT | From Rope Of Silicon | See recent Rope Of Silicon news

The most remarkable thing about Stop-Loss, director and co-writer (working with Mark Richard) Kimberly Peirce's first film since 1999's Oscar-winning Boys Don't Cry, is that it isn't anti-war. It is, in fact, very pro-soldier, looking at the fighting men and women our country sends over to the Middle East with a teary-eyed reverence that's difficult to resist. These are our sons and daughters, our brother and sisters. These are our friends. These are our neighbors. These are the people we see each day of our lives. I liked this movie back when it was released in theaters at the end of March. I love it now. These are people audiences can relate to and understand, their commitment to their country and to one another as strong and as vital as their own. The war isn't the issue here, the people are, and anyone who has been affected by this

Sara Michelle Fetters

8 July 2008 2:01 PM, PDT | From MovieMaker.com | See recent Movie Maker news

In a world where every cell phone has camera capabilities, the realities of the world are brought into our homes with relative ease. And for the first time ever this means the realities of war are brought along too. Soldiers, armed not only with guns but very often small, one-chip cameras are documenting their war-torn lives. Everyone’s a moviemaker. But while these affecting stories are making their way beyond army barracks and war zones via email and other Internet tools, rarely do they reach the masses. Sometimes it takes a skilled hand and a known face to alert the public to a greater social purpose. In her second film, Stop-loss, writer-director Kimberly Peirce—along with the film's stars, Ryan Phillippe, Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Abbie Cornish—has put a mirror to the government, asking that they see soldiers as more than numbers, but as human beings—with families

28 March 2008 10:34 AM, PDT | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news

Critics are suggesting that Stop-Loss, from Boys Don't Cry director Kimberly Peirce, is unlike any antiwar film ever produced, certainly unlike any about the Iraq or Afghan wars. A.O. Scott in the New York Times offers an almost tortured description of the movie. It is, he writes, "not only an earnest, issue-driven narrative, but also a feverish entertainment, a passionate, at times overwrought melodrama gaudy with violent actions and emotions. The sober, mournful piety that has characterized a lot of the other fictional features about Iraq ... is almost entirely missing from Stop-Loss. ... Not that the movie is unsentimental -- far from it -- but its messy, chaotic welter of feeling has a tang of authenticity. Instead of high-minded indignation or sorrow, it runs on earthier fuel: sweat, blood, beer, testosterone, loud music and an ideologically indeterminate, freewheeling sense of rage." Likewise Jan Stewart in Newsday writes that the movie "builds a cumulative power and sense of urgency that can't be denied." Much of the credit for the film's success is being attributed to the performance of Ryan Philippe, in the role of a soldier who resists orders to return to the Middle East. Philippe plays his character, says Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times, "not as a flawed hero but as a man with real and serious psychological problems trying to survive in a world of moral collapse." John Anderson in the Washington Post agrees: "Phillippe does a fine job translating the unspeakable anger of a soldier into action, expressing it physically instead of verbally," he writes. On the other hand, Amy Biancolli in the Houston Chronicle comments that the veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq "deserve a better movie" and faults Philippe for being unable "to broadcast inner torment. Oh, he'll yell when he needs to, he'll wince on cue ... but that roiling substratum of psychological pain just refuses to surface." And Kyle Smith, the lone, outspoken political conservative among the country's major newspaper critics, takes dead aim at the movie, calling it facetiously, "a highly patriotic film, if you happen to dream of the restored caliphate as you sleep in your Osama bin Laden pajamas. Its message is that the good guys are U.S. soldiers who decide to desert."

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26 March 2008 9:07 AM, PDT | From wenn.com | See recent WENN news

Hollywood star Ryan Phillippe has denied his new film Stop-loss is playing on the anti-war feeling among many U.S. citizens, insisting it is quite the opposite.

The Crash actor plays an Iraq War veteran in the Kimberly Peirce-directed film, who struggles to adapt to life back home after a first tour of duty - before he is unexpectedly sent back to the Middle East against his will.

Asked by an Mtv reporter whether the movie is "just another anti-war film", he replies: "No, no... the film to me isn't anti-war.

"If anything, it's pro-military. It's told from the soldiers' perspective, and it's about the soldiers... dealing with what it's like to serve and come home and try to assimilate and get back into some kind of a regular life."

Phillippe recently admitted he had considered joining the U.S. Army to fight for his country in the Middle East before deciding to pursue an acting career.

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4 articles from 2008