MovieTime

Review

by Julie Rigg

Almost a decade after Boys Don't Cry, director Kimberly Peirce is back with a film which focuses, with sensitivity, on the damage the Iraq war is doing to American soldiers and their families. Ryan Phillipe plays a platoon commander who has made it through and, on his last day of service, is 'stop-lossed' -- ordered to return for another tour of duty to make up for troop losses. It's a particularly cruel form of draft and more than 60,000 have been sent back since 2004. When he decides to go AWOL, his childhood friend (Abbie Cornish) is one of the few who help.

This is mostly set in the USA, and the picture it paints of attrition among the returnees is not pretty, but it is well handled. Peirce is also one of the few women to have directed war scenes, and she does well.

This is a film well worth seeing, though to me it cops out at the end. What do you think?

Director: Kimberly Peirce
Cast: Ryan Phillippe, Abbie Cornish, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Channing Tatum, Timothy Olyphant, Ciarán Hinds
Producer: Gregory Goodman, Kimberly Peirce, Mark Roybal, Scott Rudin
Script: Kimberly Peirce, Mark Richard
Cinematographer: Chris Menges
Editor: Claire Simpson
Music: John Powell
Running time: 113
Australian distributor: Paramount
Language: English
Classification: MA15+