Shawn's Stop Loss Review

2008 Movie # 47 - Stop Loss

Welcome to most likely my shortest review yet. I decided I wanted to talk about this movie without getting into any of my personal feelings on Iraq and the war and everything. As a result of that decision, I find with myself with very little to say about the actual movie itself. I'll admit this is one of the first movies this year that was more of a backgrounder. I paid enough attention to it to get the whole story and everything, but it never completely got my full attention. Did it deserve it? I don't even really know.

I wasn't that invested really in what was happening. The story was interesting enough and I was actually kind of invested in what was going to happen with Ryan Phillipe's character. I just wasn't all that invested in what was happening with anyone else in the story. By the end I found I was starting to lose interest in Ryan's story as well, which didn't leave me with much to care about in this movie.

The acting was fine. I've always liked both Ryan Philippe and Joseph Gordon Levitt (if you haven't seen The Lookout starring him I highly recommend it) and they do well in this movie. I have no opinion on Channing Tatum but he does fine here as well.

In the end, maybe I just wasn't in the right mood while watching it or something but I just couldn't bring myself to get into this movie. It wasn't horrible, it wasn't great...I don't know. I am actually struggling to come up with something to say here. It is kind of interesting though that every single movie to be released in the last year or so about Iraq (and there has actually been a fairly high number of them) hasn't done well. This is the first one of those movies I've actually watched and I don't know...whatever.

**/5