STOP-LOSS...see this film

Kimberly Peirce's last film was 9 years ago, Boys Don't Cry, a disturbing film that brought to light the senselessness of intolerance. Now, her first film since then is Stop-Loss, a term used to soldiers who have served their obligation in the U.S. Army and risked their lives in the Iraq War. But, this is not another film on the War, so please go and see it.

Peirce started this film as a documentary, but when her brother came back from his Iraq tour of duty, the letters and video taken by the soldiers themselves compelled her to tell the story through the soldiers eyes. Yes, it is graphically, brutally violent, but the depictions are real. The gore and senselessness of this war and the psychological consequences on these young men who serve has never been so right on.

And, I don't say this lightly or from some film critic's eye. I know how gruesome and damaging war is. I volunteered at a physical therapy Army hospital during the Vietnam War where landmines blew off multiple limbs on soldiers. One young man, barely 26 years old, returned from Vietnam with just a torso, but his spirit seemed still intact during his whirlpool therapies. Immersed in the pool, I lost sense of his missing limbs. He was still a person, with emotions, a generous forgiving heart and a mind that will never forget. A few months later, when he was released from rehab to go home to his family, his family shunned him because they didn't want to be reminded of what the war did to him, cheating him and them out of life. He died a year later from depression.

The Iraq War destroys so many lives. All war annihilates people, physically and mentally. Peirce pierces through the glories of filmmaking and hits the tragic story of how wartime violence begets domestic and personal violence. Whatever the critics' reviews are about this film, one wonders if they've ever been to war because if they had, I doubt if the word "melodrama" would ever enter that review.

This is an important film, the most realistic I've seen. It's not easy to watch, by any means, but necessary to experience.