Otherwise known as ‘the back-door draft’, the US military’s sneaky little stop-loss policy has resulted in 81,000 soldiers being returned to duty against their wishes. As the term suggests, it stops the army from losing soldiers.

Anti-war but pro-soldier, director Kimberley Pierce’s first film since the Oscar-winning Boys Don’t Cry is a showier but equally intense drama.

Of course, there’s no crying amongst the boys of Stop-Loss. Squad leader Sgt King (Phillippe) and his best friend Sgt Shriver (Tatum) are just glad to have made it home from Iraq in one piece… unlike some of their buddies.

They receive a good ol’ Texan welcome, King awarded the Purple Heart and Shriver reunited with his fiancée Michelle (Cornish).

But the return to civilian life is a struggle, particularly for married man Burgess (Gordon-Levitt). Wasting their days drinking, brawling and shooting stuff up, nobody knows what the future hold.

Uncle Sam knows though. On handing over his exit papers, King is told that he can’t quit. By order of the President.

Again, he finds himself fighting for what’s right. Yet where his last battle was driven by honour, kinship and duty, this is a matter of principle and personal integrity.

Refusing to go back to either Iraq or the stockade, King goes on the run. Being his sister in all but blood, Michelle volunteers to take him wherever he wants. Ultimately though, the hero is on his own.

What emerges is a story of unrequited love. Not between King and Michelle, but between young patriots and the country they so faithfully serve.

An MTV production, Stop-Loss clearly targets the youth audience, delivering its anti-establishment message with rapid-fire editing, a thumping rock’n’rap soundtrack and a handsome cast (Ciaran Hinds and Timothy Olyphant offering solid back-up as King’s father and commanding officer respectively).

But Pierce doesn’t cushion the blows. She hits the ground running with a ferocious gunfight in a Tikrit backstreet, presenting the physical aftermath some time later when King visits a bomb-blasted comrade in hospital.

And though some scenes are a tad familiar (meeting the two-faced politician, the run-in with street hoods, the inevitable suicide), none are afflicted by the mawkishness that often plagues nerve-touching issue pictures like this.

As valid and competent an exposé of America’s military shortcomings as the Oscar-touted In The Valley of Elah, Stop-Loss is the war protesters’ gain.

Elliott Noble