I just watched Stop Loss. Man, I am at a loss, for words that is. I won’t spoil this film for anyone, but did anyone see it and see a hint of reality?
My suggestion for a title instead of Stop Loss would be Combat Stress Alcoholics.
SSG Schwartz
Yeah, I saw it at a screening where the director held a Q&A session after the movie. It’s not great, but I liked it for the most part.
A lot of it was based on stories the director heard from her brother and his friends, who all served in Iraq, and from traveling around the country talking to returning veterans of Iraq. Are you saying it’s ALL bullshit?
I am saying that the basic premise of the movie is BS. I am assuming (dangerous, I know) that the SSG is assigned to a Reserve unit. After coming off active duty, he would not have to report back to active duty and deploy within a month. He would have to go through Soldier Readiness checks at a minimum. That would be 90 days, not you have 30 days to go to Iraq. Also, he would be trained…
Ah fuck it, I should not expect reality from MTV unless it is Real World
SSG Schwartz
Ooooohm it’s one of THOSE nitpicks eh? Kinda like someone who lives in a city where a movie was filmed, and the movie’s ruined for them because the bus stop the characters get off is miles away from the building they then enter. Got it.
:rolleyes:
I apologise for that. I don’t care enough about the movie to feel strongly one way or the other if someone else likes it or not. It’s about an important topic, but I admit it could have had a better script. Still, those kinds of “insider” nitpicks drive me batty, no matter what the movie is, and I tend to automatically disregard the opinions of someone who condemns a movie based on them. It didn’t deserve an eyeroll though.
Most Hollywood movies can’t get their military shit right. While I personally liked Stop Loss they did veer a hard left for the sake of drama in some areas. The part where he expects to get out that day (shouldn’t he have started his EAOS paperwork months ago?) only to get told he’s going back to Iraq in a couple weeks, while I can sympathize the filmmakers had to condense a lot of shit into a short scene I wouldn’t call it an insignificant detail.
I hardly consider it an insignificant “insider” nitpick. If you are making a movie about the military that is supposedly based on your loved one’s actual experiences, then why throw the “actual experience” out the window and make some shit up for dramatic effect? Especially since the “this is the real experience” stuff was heavily used to market the film.
Shoddy and lame. The movie, not your criticism of the nitpick. 
I loved the fact that he effectively tells his commander to fuck off and goes AWOL for–what–months? Then they kiss his ass to get him back and he deploys WITH THE SAME RANK AS BEFORE!?! No consequences for any of that, I guess.
The other big thing I thought was silly is how the guy’s whole family knows “Boot” or whatever the commander’s name was. They’re like “Just go talk to Boot, he’ll take care of it” What the fuck? He’s not high school football coach for crying out loud. Whose family actually knows the battalion or brigade commander as informally as that? Just silly hollywood trying to give that small town feeling to it all, I guess.
And I didn’t get the feeling that it was a Reserve unit. Mainly because the way he said “Most of the guys aren’t from here” or “Most of the guys didn’t grow up in Texas” or some shit like that. I think it was a nonamed, generic active duty brigade stationed at an unnamed generic Texas town. Fort Bliss, anyone? It just so happened that some of the soldiers grew up in the area (and had parents there). The rest of them only had houses there because they were stationed out of there. I dont think they were Reservists.
Those are all significant details, not insider nitpicks. You want an insider nitpick? Who the fuck says “Do you copy me!?” Soldiers don’t talk like that.
One more insider nitpick that bothered me the second time I watched the film. I didn’t notice the actual dates the first time, and just assumed that this unit supposedly deployed during the initial invasion or shortly thereafter. My assumptions were based on the equipment they had, and the uniforms they wore.
But actually, the “supposedly” were deployed in 2007-2008 timeframe. Look at all the dates on the film of the KIAs. So they were supposed to be a present day unit, and not a unit of 4 years ago. But there was not a single Army unit (Reserve, Guard, or Otherwise) in Iraq in 2007 wearing three color desert BDUs.
/nitpick
And nauseous, dizzy? Is the purge working?