(2008) In Tikrit, Iraq, during the final days of their tour, after insurgents inside a car open fire at a check point, Army Staff Sgt Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe) and his men pursue in a Humvee but find themselves caught in an ambush in an alley; three Americans die along with several hajis and a few women and children. A welcoming crowd in Brazos, Texas, with band and parade greet their local heroes: Sgt King (decorated with Purple Heart and Bronze Star after two tours, one in Afghanistan and one in Iraq), Sgt Steve Shriver (Channing Tatum), Pvt Tommy Burgess (Joseph Gordon Levitt), and others. "Are we winning this thing?" someone in the crowd asks.

Tommy quickly gets himself into trouble, getting into a fight, thrown out by his bride Jeanie (he then uses their wedding gifts for target practice), a DUI, and finally a BCD (bad conduct discharge). Drunk and delusional, imagining he's outside the wire in Iraq again, Steve digs a ranger grave in his fiancée's front yard, hunkering down with a pistol. "Man, I'm gonna miss blowing things up," admits Steve when again sober.

This is a bleak, relentlessly depressing film from director/co-writer Kimberley Peirce. While processing out, having completed his contracted military service, instead of obtaining his discharge papers Brandon receives orders to report for duty to 1st Brigade for shipping out to Iraq again: "You've been stop-lossed." It's the backdoor draft, having affected at least 81,000 service personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan, preventing veterans from leaving the military even though their time of service has expired, a result of enlistment shortages and no national draft.

During an argument with his commanding officer, Lt Col Boots Miller (Timothy Olyphant), that stop-loss only applies during a time of war - even President Bush had said the war had ended soon after the invasion - Sgt King is taken into custody and escorted toward the stockade. Escaping from his captors, jumping into Sgt Shriver's Jeep, Brandon goes AWOL. At his parents' ranch, he convinces his dad (Ciarán Hinds) and mother that as a decorated veteran their senator in Washington, DC, will help him; Steve's fiancée Michelle (Abbie Cornish) volunteers her car and companionship for the trip.

They make a detour to Memphis for Brandon to visit with the family of "Preacher" Paul, who'd been killed during the last ambush; Michelle learns through Paul's younger brother Michael of soldiers filing a lawsuit against stop-loss orders. Later they will also detour to see another Brazos casualty, Pvt Rico Rodriguez - "Sarge, we got out just in time; I feel lucky" - in a VA hospital, recovering from the loss of his eyesight and his right arm and leg.

Suffering from his own bad memories, Brandon gets into a fight with three thieves and treats them as if they were haji prisoners. "Sand. Fleas. Flies. Heat. Boredom," he says of Iraq - punctuated by getting shot or blown up - then tries to explain to Michelle his motivations, beginning with payback for 9/11 and wanting to protect his family only to discover over there the deception that debased everything into brute survival with a "kill-or-be-killed mentality." In conclusion he insists: "I'm done with killing." In considering their situation, Michelle darkly predicts: "I think we got both kinds of danger here."

From a black vet at a motel, who's been on the run for 14 months with his wife and child, Brandon accepts the name and phone number of a peacenik lawyer helping AWOL soldiers get into Canada; but before he has a chance to contact Mr Carlson, Steve shows up in his dress uniform from Michelle's having called him: "I'm here to take you back." Steve explains that Boots has offered Brandon a deal of no punishment if he'll return within 14 hours. As soon as Michelle, who's been waiting five years to get married but not as a military spouse, realizes that Steve has re-enlisted, she refuses to having anything more to do with him: "Jody's got your girl and gone" (song lyrics). "You got a right to be stupid," answers Brandon, adding: "It's wrong. I'm fighting this thing."

It's all uphill with obstacles: from a phone call the Texas senator's secretary informs Brandon that as a fugitive he won't be granted an audience; in need of a thousand dollars for his flight to Canada (not mentioned in the movie, unlike during the Vietnam War when draft dodgers and conscientious objectors found neighbors to the north sympathetic, the Canadian government has been hostile to fugitives, recently extraditing a soldier back to the US for prosecution), Michelle sells her car for Brandon; the trip is one way and alone without expectation of ever being able to go home to his parents' ranch or see friends again. Then it all comes apart.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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