"Stop Loss"

[Duty Honor Country]

Hollywood is taking another swing at Iraq with this movie. I saw the trailer this morning as I skimmed the news. The story line goes as follows.

An infantryman gets deployed to Iraq, earns the Bronze Star with valor and the Purple Heart. He comes home to a hero's welcome at his home town. He plans to get out and low and behold, on the day he is suppose to get out he is stop lossed. My reaction to that bit is stop losses don't work like that. A stop loss is not issued by in and out processing on the very day one is suppose to separate from service. Anyways, the guy is in turmoil since his girlfreind/wife says she cannot take another year apart from him. He ends up fighting the stop loss. It looks like his buddies try to get him to go back to Iraq. I think he stays, his buddy goes and he is killed. Thats what the trailer lead me to believe.

Of course this movie has anti war written all over it. I am trying to keep neutral but my gut tells me this is another anti war flick. Maybe I'm wrong. The movie comes out in early 2008.

 

[Fox]

Sounds like "Born on the Fourth of July." :?

 

[MontyB]

Hollywood is taking another swing at Iraq with this movie. I saw the trailer this morning as I skimmed the news. The story line goes as follows.

An infantryman gets deployed to Iraq, earns the Bronze Star with valor and the Purple Heart. He comes home to a hero's welcome at his home town. He plans to get out and low and behold, on the day he is suppose to get out he is stop lossed. My reaction to that bit is stop losses don't work like that. A stop loss is not issued by in and out processing on the very day one is suppose to separate from service. Anyways, the guy is in turmoil since his girlfreind/wife says she cannot take another year apart from him. He ends up fighting the stop loss. It looks like his buddies try to get him to go back to Iraq. I think he stays, his buddy goes and he is killed. Thats what the trailer lead me to believe.

Of course this movie has anti war written all over it. I am trying to keep neutral but my gut tells me this is another anti war flick. Maybe I'm wrong. The movie comes out in early 2008.

I wouldn't worry too much about it, I doubt it will sway peoples opinions.

Take it for what it is; entertainment. It doesn't have to be real or accurate to fit into that category.

 

[A Can of Man]

Actually it could and often does. Theater is a very powerful weapon.
The reason why puppet shows and plays are so important here in Indonesia is because before they would spread the legitimacy of the leadership through tales about those in power and those who have given them the right to rule. The stories and shows of their feats etc., no matter how fictitious, nonetheless shaped their minds and loyalties. I'm talking about pre-colonial Indonesia... when the concept of Indonesia itself didn't exist yet.
People take movies for facts all the time, on all sides of the political spectrum.
Often these messages are based on fallacies that the regular folks don't know.
But this is what I say about the fighting man under the rank of Staff Sergeant or in the case of officers, a late Major or Lieutenant Colonel: Your ass belongs to your service. If you wanted a quiet 9-5 job where you're guaranteed to see your wife and kid at the end of the day, you're in the wrong line of work. This is especially so if you're in any of the combat arms.
If it's a crap movie that would suck even more.
At least "Born on the Fourth of July" was a good movie and I felt had a lot of elements of truth in it. It's the story of a Marine who was thrown out because the government and the Corps found no use for him anymore. These stories need to be told so that this sort of thing does not happen again. The guy wasn't whining about not seeing being able to see his girlfriend, he wasn't whining about rotation cycles (the guy in the movie was in his second tour in Vietnam), he wanted to keep his legs and wanted to be treated like a human being. Unfortunately even that was asking for too much.

 

[mmarsh]

Doody

You know, most War movies are anti-war by their very nature. You think of the great war pics All Quiet on the Western Front, Hells Angels, Platoon, Iron Cross, saving private Ryan, etc. They all carry a anti-war message, the futility of such mass slaughter.

The only exception to this rule are the John Wayne WWII flicks which are considered totally unrealitic due to the fact that combat and horrors of war have been largely sanitized, giving the impression that war is like going camping. -I think Saving Private Ryan single handedly made those films obsolete. Personally I can no longer watch them.

Mind you, there is a difference between anti-war and anti-military.

 

[A Can of Man]

But this one smells like anti-military.
I prefer war flicks to be realistic. Anti-war or no anti-war. But also people need to realize: the real world is unforgiving. Rules that apply at the mall do not apply in dangerous places.