Stop-Loss
Filmfest 2008

Following a nerve-fraying firefight in a Tikrit alleyway, the movie springs to life once it touches down deep in the heart of Texas, where three survivors of that ambush - Sergeants Brandon King and Steve Shriver, and a fellow officer, Tommy Burgess - return to their families amidst much pomp, circumstance, and tinsel. As she ably demonstrated in Oscar-winning Boys Don't Cry, this is the sort of thing that Peirce does very well: She puts blue-collar, red-state American life on-screen without glib irony or smug disdain. The title - shorthand for a loophole in military contracts that allows soldiers to be redeployed in wartime even after fulfilling the terms of their service - comes home to roost, and Peirce shifts from the vicissitudes of small-town life to one man's fight against the military-industrial complex. 'You're going to send me back for 11 more years?' Brandon asks, incredulously, upon receiving his new orders. 'Fuck the president!' he adds, before busting out of the stockade and taking to the highway with Steve's alienated ex-fiancée Michelle... Village Voice