Shared Darkness

Yes, the poster, in its naked grab at the John Mellencamp set, has a certain and unfortunate desperate similarity to Varsity Blues — unfortunate mainly in the sense that there’s no whipped cream bikini scene with Ali Larter. Still, the Iraq War homeland drama Stop-Loss, co-written and directed by Kimberly Peirce [sic], the director of the Oscar-winning Boys Don’t Cry, is a decently stirring portrait of shattered, modern American masculinity.

 

At once raw and still a bit artsy, the film centers around Staff Sergeant Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe, above left), a small town Texas twentysomething who’s done a couple tours in Iraq with his high school pals — a group that includes best friend Steve Shriver (Step Up‘s Channing Tatum), Isaac Butler (Rob Brown) and Tommy Burgess (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). The movie opens with hand-held home movies from their time overseas, then returns our guys Stateside. Haunted by the wounding of a soldier, Rico Rodriguez (Victor Rasuk), under his command, Brandon is preparing to leave the Army behind. He’s thrown for a loop, though, when he receives a “stop-loss” order, scotching his plans of a new life.

Brandon tries to argue with his immediate superior, Lt. Col. Boot Miller (Timothy Olyphant), but is basically told that he’s too valuable to let go, and that the Army is exercising its government-granted power of right-of-refusal on his enlistment term limitation, since they’re having trouble meeting new recruitment goals. In grand fashion, Brandon goes AWOL, hooking up with Steve’s longtime girlfriend, Michelle (Abbie Cornish), and hitting the road, pondering his options.

Released by Paramount earlier this spring, Stop-Loss underwent a pansification in its marketing, with early theatrical trailers featuring a hard-driving rock tune by Drowning Pool being replaced by lilting, uplifting alt-rock from Snow Patrol. This late-game tonal switch may or may not have ultimately had much to do with Stop-Loss‘ box office fate (it more or less tanked, to the tally of just under $11 million in 12 weeks of release), but it sure didn’t put the movie’s best foot forward. This is a personal story for Peirce (she recently had a brother who enlisted in the military at 18 years of age), and her steely dedication to detail and realism — both in the bravado and camaraderie of the grunts, and the bureaucratic hot potato that ensues Stateside — are what most mark Stop-Loss, and give it its punch.

Phillippe has big screen war experience in the form of Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers, and has the jaw, consistency of effort and general fortitude on which to hang a movie like this, but still comes across a bit stiff and mannered, which is problematic since he’s the protagonist that drives our pained, sympathetic embrace of the film. Rather than play the minor chords of a guy trying to swallow his demons along with his rising indignation, Phillippe always seems to give us just a little too much — too much glowering, too much thousand-yard-stare vacancy, too much flinty resolve — and the result is something that never quite fully slips free of the shackles of Hollywood conventions. Still, this is a movie that has the courage to say, quite literally, “Fuck the president, and in this regard it still feels bold and stirring… as well as understandably unresolved.

Packaged in a regular Amray plastic case, the Stop-Loss DVD is presented in widescreen enhanced for 16×9 TVs, with Dolby digital English 5.1 surround sound, French 5.1 surround sound and Spanish 5.1 surround sound audio tracks, and optional English, French and Spanish subtitles. The disc includes an audio commentary track with Peirce and co-writer Mark Richard in which they discuss the painstaking writing process, and heap praise on the movie’s actors. Peirce also talks some about her near-decade break between big screen features, saying she needed to feel the same level of passionate involvement that she did with her lauded debut.

Two featurettes are also included — a 21-minute making-of affair with cast and crew interviews, and a 10-minute look at the military boot camp that the young actors all went through. There are also 11 deleted scenes with optional commentary by Peirce, most of which she notes are trims for reasons of pacing. Though totaling around 19 minutes, there aren’t really grand subplots left out here, just mostly shading and details; the chief casualty is a bit expanding upon Brandon’s attempts to secure the assistance and political intervention of his senator, Orton Worrell (Josef Sommer), which would have helped flesh out the movie’s second and third acts some. Rounding out the DVD material are previews for The Ruins and Shine a Light, as well as Iron Man and a couple other, forthcoming Paramount theatrical releases. Overall, Peirce speaks her mind fairly forthrightly in Stop-Loss‘ supplemental extras, but even a bit more edge — some more real-world contextualization, in the form of a mini-doc on military policy, or an argumentative commentary track between left-and-right pundits — would have benefited this DVD release. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) B- (Disc)

The ancient Maya civilization of Central America left behind a riddle —
an intricate and mysterious hieroglyphic script carved on stone
monuments and painted on pottery and bark books. Because the invading
Spanish suppressed nearly all knowledge of how the script worked,
until very recently unlocking its meaning posed one of modern archeology’s fiercest challenges.

That changes with this fascinating hour-long, new-to-DVD title. For the first time, NOVA presents the epic inside story of how the decoding was done, told by the experts at the center of one of archeology’s greatest detective stories. Cracking the Maya Code highlights the ingenious breakthroughs that opened the door to deciphering the elaborate and exotic script and finally cracked the code, unleashing a flood of dramatic new insights about the ancient civilization. Once thought to record the esoteric calculations of mystical astronomer-priests presiding over peaceful jungle cities, an utterly different, war-torn world is revealed, unveiling details of conquests, raids and dynastic rivalries spanning centuries. With lush footage of Maya temples and art, the program exposes the hidden face of the Maya and highlights the brilliant leaps of insight that opened the door to deciphering their elaborate and exotic script. For armchair linguists and cultural historians, this is a fascinating and revelatory documentary, and the painstaking investigatory details examined and explained give the movie a nice thrill-of-the-chase subtext only glancingly related to its primary focus.

Housed in a regular Amray case and presented in 16:9 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby stereo on a single DVD-5 disc, Cracking the Maya Code is, as with other NOVA titles released through WGBH, rather slim on special features. In addition to closed captions and described video for the visually impaired, the only other supplemental material is a link to the NOVA web site, and a small clutch of printable activities for educators. B+ (Movie) C- (Disc)