How to not look like an Iraq movie

Is it a clever marketing campaign? Or a classic case of bait and switch?

Promotions for “Stop-Loss” (due in theaters Friday) make it seem like the Iraq war homecoming drama is more interested in bringing “SexyBack” to an audience of MTV viewers than wrestling with complex issues confronting soldiers returning from active duty in the Middle East: post-traumatic stress disorder and the stop-loss military provision that can legally re-conscript combat veterans -- even against their wills -- creating what has been decried as a “back-door draft.”

On a poster for the film, Ryan Phillippe lounges atop a ‘70s muscle car wearing a tight T-shirt and a look of studly reticence. He’s flanked by his teen heartthrob co-stars Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Phillippe’s rumored one-time paramour Abbie Cornish, who all look as if they just walked off a photo shoot for the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. In trailers for the film (with the nu-metal riffage of Drowning Pool’s “Bodies” playing in the background), these central characters are shown partying, flirting and fighting and alternately pouting moodily and preening, bare-chested and sweaty, in the Texas heat.

But by catering directly to the interests of twentysomething moviegoers (that is, by fixating on the movie stars’ physiques and personal chemistry) and deliberately de-emphasizing “Stop-Loss’ ” second Gulf War pedigree, marketers for its distributor Paramount hope to avoid the fate shared by other recent Iraq war-related movies -- “In the Valley of Elah,” “Rendition,” “Redacted,” “No End in Sight” and “The Kingdom,” which all tanked at the box office.

Some pre-release ticket sales data, or tracking, have set opening-weekend performance expectations for “Stop-Loss” around $6 million.

But sexed-up promos for the film (which held its premiere March 19, the fifth anniversary of the second Gulf War) prompted the snarky entertainment industry blog Defamer.com to wonder in a recent headline: “Are Ryan Phillippe’s abs enough to convince audiences to see an Iraq-themed movie?”

The film follows Army Sgt. Brandon King (Phillippe), a decorated hero from a Texas military family. No sooner has he returned from two tours of duty in Iraq to a hero’s welcome than he receives stop-loss orders to redeploy there. Brandon’s agonizing decision to go AWOL rather than submit to the “involuntary extension” of his duty (a contractual loophole of enlisting) is at the heart of the movie’s action.

Earlier this month, an “interstitial” ad campaign featuring interviews with cast members began to broadcast on MTV; it was a nifty bit of synergy courtesy of its release under Paramount’s genre banner of MTV Films.

But as importantly, “Stop-Loss” writer-director Kimberly Peirce has been proselytizing on behalf of the film -- her long-gestating follow-up to her acclaimed 1999 feature debut “Boys Don’t Cry” -- hoping to build an audience one college campus at a time. Throughout October and November and for the better part of February and March, Peirce has been barnstorming across the country, screening the film and conducting Q&A; sessions at 22 universities.

Moreover, since January, the writer-director has been communicating directly with fans via a blog on the film’s website, www.stoplossmovie .com/SoundOff. A regular presence online, she has answered questions (“Are you coming to Boston?”) and has accepted compliments (“Thank you for showing the struggle of Army families everywhere”) but also has come up against negative reactions (“Looking at your trailer, it looks like a total misrepresentation of how and when stop-loss works . . . . And like every other anti-Iraq war movie that has been [made] you are about to lose a lot of money”).

Ironically, even as marketers try to limit “Stop-Loss’ ” association with the second Gulf War, the film offers a more nuanced perspective on modern military life than any Iraq war movie that has come before it.

“It’s really a deeply personal story about characters,” Peirce said at an appearance at Ohio State University in November, about “American people and what they are going through.”

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chris.lee@latimes.com