Conflicted soldier at heart of ‘Stop-Loss’

“Stop-Loss” slipped in and out of theaters last spring with little fanfare, except for all those media reports that cited its poor box office performance as evidence that Iraq war movies don’t sell. With its arrival on DVD, the Ryan Phillippe film seeks a wider audience.

The plot is fairly straightforward. Brandon King (Phillippe), a decorated Army sergeant, comes home from the war to a hero’s welcome but soon discovers he must return to Iraq. Frustrated and naively convinced that a senator can get him out of the situation, he goes AWOL, hops in a car with his best friend’s girl (Abbie Cornish) and heads to Washington to seek help.

That’s the basic narrative, but of course the real story is the subtext: the impact that multiple stints in Iraq are having on thousands of American soldiers.

The movie motors along so quickly that some of that subtext gets lost. That’s where the DVD’s extras play a crucial role. They include a commentary track from director-writer Kimberly Peirce and co-writer Mark Richard, 11 deleted scenes with optional commentary from Peirce and two behind-the-scenes featurettes. The commentaries and “The Making of ‘Stop-Loss’ ” give Peirce, who directed 1999’s “Boys Don’t Cry,” the opportunity to explain how her brother’s service in the war inspired her to make the film. The extras also provide a sense of how much time Peirce and Richard devoted to research.