Rating: 2.5 Pulses

Rated R

Leave it to MTV to waggle their increasingly uninteresting logo in young America’s face hoping to lure them into theatres. This time they stepped it up, touting Stop-Loss as their first “anti-war movie.” At first, it even seems it might be an anti-war movie.

The film starts in Iraq, where soldiers sing their own version of Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue,” gaze at pictures of loved ones, and even find God, all shown through a shaky, low-quality format supposed to mean this is first-hand footage.

Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry) does a standup job of including atrocities of war in her film. In the beginning, that includes graphic civilian casualties in Iraq. By the end, it’s like she’s going through a list of every issue facing soldiers back in the U.S.: post-traumatic stress syndrome, wife beating, flashbacks, alcoholism, loss of limbs, suicide, and, of course, stop loss, when a soldier is informed he has been voluntarily reenlisted and has waived his right to refuse.

Peirce even recruited a standup cast to portray her troubled Texan soldiers, if only she’d done as good a job recruiting their accents.

It seems like Peirce had good intentions, she just got lost along the way as she tip-toed down the line of political correctness. Half way into her film you’re tired of the pointless story line and hope for more moments like King’s “eff the President” tirade when he finds himself stop-lossed.

I Guess it’s kind of hard to make a statement when you’re looking over your shoulder. The movie is ultimately frustrating and leaves viewers wondering what exactly Peirce was trying to say.

The ending is a joke, the story gets off track, but any attempt to illuminate the numerous problems with this war gets some props.