Stop-Loss Might Be a Bad Movie. Can We Handle It?

We get it.  People hate the war.

It’s natural that the Iraq war would inspire a great deal of filmmaking, and some films have been more praiseworthy than others.  The war, terrorism, and the military are opaque and intriguing topics to many, and countless documentary and short films have explored the topics, with varying degrees of success.  We can be certain that the spate of war movies won’t stop any time soon.

            Richard Schickel, author and film critic for Time magazine, recently reviewed the newest Iraq “human casualty” film, Kimberly Peirce’s Stop-Loss.   How does Schickel feel about it?  It’s hard to tell.  In his entire review, the only statements he actually makes about the film itself are that it’s about “getting screwed,” and that it’s “relentlessly grim.”  Well, I think we probably could have figured those things out for ourselves without even seeing the movie.   What is his opinion of the film?  He doesn’t bother to mention that. 

            Schickel proceeds to use his 600 words to editorialize about how goshdarn unfair the situation is.  His thesis is that Stop-Loss is so grim because Americans refuse to acknowledge the fact that the war is being fought by a poverty-ridden “victim class."   This idea isn't new, and many people would agree with him.  However, if Schickel wants to wax philosophic about injustice, he should write an editorial.  People read film criticism for many reasons - for illumination, for a value judgment, or just to see whether it’s worth their 10 bucks - but all of the reasons involve wanting to actually know something about the film.   Schickel makes no pronouncements about the film’s technical merits at all.   Is Schickel so afraid of hurting Ryan Phillipe’s feelings that he doesn’t want to come out and say what he thought about the movie, or did he genuinely love it?  I’m betting on the former, because while he doesn’t say he hated Stop-Loss, he doesn’t say he loves it, either.   

Salon’s Stephanie Zacharek, along with many other major film critics, acknowledged that while the subject of the film was indeed emotional and wrenching, the film itself was not very good.  In her words, it’s “a drama so aggressively mediocre that you're forced to guilt yourself into caring about the characters in front of you.”  Now, THAT says something about the movie.  Other critics have written that while perhaps it’s a story that needs to be told, Peirce hasn’t told it very well.  Zacharek, The NYTimes’ A.O. Scott and Variety all felt that the film was uneven, unfocused, and derivative. 

Has Iraq ventured into “untouchable” territory?  Richard Schickel apparently feels that Americans are so sensitive that they can’t stomach a little bit of criticism.   Has the war become so sacred that any intimation that Stop-Loss might be sorta bad has become a pronouncement of hatred for America itself?   Panning a war movie is not tantamount to spitting on the flag.  The job of a film critic is to review the film in question.   Sometimes, no matter how “painfully necessary and heartfelt” a movie is, you have to call it what it really is – lousy.