Synopsis
A veteran soldier returns from his completed tour of duty in Iraq, only to find his life turned upside down when he is arbitrarily ordered to return to field duty by the Army.
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Cast
- Ryan PhillippeBrandon King
- Abbie CornishMichelle
- Joseph Gordon-LevittTommy Burgess
- Channing TatumSteve Shriver
- Josef SommerSenator Orton Worrell
- Timothy OlyphantLieutenant Colonel Boot Miller
- Ciarán HindsRoy King
- Linda EmondIda King
- Steven StraitMichael Colson
- Alex FrostShorty
Recommendations
- 91
The A.V. Club
Stop-Loss is a human story first and foremost, and Peirce and her stellar young cast ensure that the message never gets in the way of the storytelling. - 88
Rolling Stone
Even when the script slips into sentiment, Peirce sticks with her troubled, questing soldiers, and through this raw and riveting movie, they stick with us. - 70
Washington Post
It's a remarkably entertaining movie, thanks in part to a first-rate cast and a director who knows you can't make a point without calling everyone to attention. - 67
Entertainment Weekly
A painfully polite Iraq war drama pitched at the MTV generation. - 63
Chicago Tribune
While Stop-Loss doesn’t pack anything like the emotional wallop of her previous film, the movies do share Peirce’s clear-eyed refusal to answer difficult questions with simplistic answers. - 63
Charlotte Observer
Someone watching Stop-Loss with younger eyes might feel the heat of the main soldier's dilemma more than I did, but I couldn't help thinking director Kimberly Peirce was presenting us with abstract ideas in the forms of half-realized characters. - 60
The Hollywood Reporter
A young cast and hotheaded melodramatic streak make it broadly accessible, perhaps enough so to help the film scrape past boxoffice challenges faced by other Iraq-centered features. - 60
Village Voice
In the end, Stop-Loss's evening-news topicality proves both an asset and a liability--an irresolvable structural conundrum. Simply put, the film so effectively reconstitutes those Vietnam-homecoming touchstones that we can anticipate its every move well before it makes them.
