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Stop-Loss is a war movie. Specifically, it is a film about the war in Iraq. At the center of its storyline is the controversial issue of "Stop Lossing," the governmental order of thousands of soldiers to continue their service after they have completed their tours of duty. At its core, the story that it tells is very much a tragedy. There is a scene where one of the movie's characters shares a few choice words about our commander in chief and his institution of stop loss orders but even though watching Stop-Loss makes me wish we could bring all of our soldiers home right now and never go to war again, I would have to say that to call Stop-Loss an Anti-War movie and leave it at that would almost be missing the point.

As I see it, the story Stop-Loss tells is not so much a critique of the war we are fighting right now as it is an honest look at the ugliness of war in general. It paints a picture of the toll that the war is taking on the lives of young soldiers today and the toll that any war, whether justified or unjustified, will take on everyone it touches. As it tells a story of war that is more about the individuals fighting in it than the greater beast it is, it almost pushes us to see that war is not just a political issue on which to take sides, but rather a personal reality that is much more complex. And if I were to characterize that reality in only a few words, it would be the fight to survive.

At one point in the movie, Sergeant Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe) describes the war that he and his friends have been fighting as one where "the only thing you can believe in is survival, protecting the guy to your left and protecting the guy to your right." And even though almost the entirety of the movie takes place off the battlefield, as we walk beside Brandon and his friends upon their return home, that reality is still very much what characterizes their lives.

For Brandon, his fight begins when he is told he has been stop-lossed. After years of fighting in the war, his own promise of survival had rested on the fact that he was going to get out soon. It isn't so much that he sees the end of his service as a relief from the daily threat of his own death, but rather a release from the his own role in the deaths of others. As he puts it, he has a box inside his head where he puts all the stuff he can't deal with, a box that is filled with all the people he has killed or failed to save, and a box that just cannot hold any more. And in a world where being able to see the end of anything difficult to deal with is sometimes the only thing that can get us through it, Brandon's decision to go AWOL is understandable.

But as Brandon travels across the country to seek his freedom, back at home, the fight for survival looks a bit different. For Brandon's best friend Steve (Channing Tatum), his release from the army has come through. He is free to live as a civilian, to marry his fiancè, and to live a normal life. But barely a day after he has arrived home, he has torn apart his fiancè's house, given her a black eye, and dug himself a ranger grave in the front yard. Legally, Steve may have been freed of his wartime duty, but psychologically, he clearly has not. On the battlefield Steve may have been one of the best sharpshooters out there, but back at home it's as if he is fighting blind. And so, even as Brandon's fight for survival leads him away from the service, Steve's leads him right back.

Also having difficulty with the return home is Steve and Brandon's buddy Tommy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Less than a day after he gets back, his wife has kicked him out of the house. He cannot stop drinking and keeps unwisely pairing his drinking with driving. Haunted by the recent death of his best friend, his only motivation for living seems to be getting back to Iraq and killing whoever killed him. And so, as his behavior threatens his ability to stay in the service, instead of considering himself lucky that he might not have to return to Iraq again, all he can see is the hopelessness of losing the only thing he knows how to do, the only family he knows how to relate to, and the only purpose he can understand for himself.

Although Brandon is the only one of the three men who has officially been stop-lossed, as I watched the stories of Brandon, his friends, and his family, it struck me that when war is at hand, it is almost as if everyone has been stop- lossed from the get-go. For as we observe, the ugliness of war does not end on the battlefield. Even though Brandon has in mind that leaving the war will free him from that which tortures him, feelings of guilt and responsibility continue to follow him. When he is not there to prevent the death of a friend off the battlefield, he is hit hard. And although his conviction that getting out of the war will be the best thing for himself, his friends, and his family, when he is faced with what that may actually look like, his choice is not quite as clear.

Yes, the picture that Stop-Loss paints is tragic one. As Brandon puts it, it is a story that honestly acknowledges the fact that war is not something we can just put behind us. As an emotional confrontation between Brandon and Steve reminds us, as much as it makes sense that death might be stopped by simply leaving the battlefield, we must also consider the reality of the deaths that we might prevent by being on the battlefield. And so, as the movie comes to an end and its characters continue on the paths they have chosen for themselves, in honor of the men we meet in the movie and the thousands of real soldiers in much same boat, I challenge everyone who goes to see Stop-Loss to look at war as more than just a political stance, to see its ugliness as something that rests on a reality greater than simply whether we stay in or pull out, and to recognize that in a world where we must sometimes deal with things we would rather not have to, often the only thing we can do in their face is simply to be there for each other as we deal and do our best help each other survive.