As a battle-tested Iraq war hero who cuts and runs when Uncle Sam invites him back for more, Ryan Phillippe embodies the progressive protest-politics of Kimberly Peirce's Stop Loss. It's anti-war but pro-soldier; love the player, hate the game.

Unfortunately, the anti-war/pro-soldier paradox is one that rings much truer in real life – plastered on pickets, shouted from street corners – than it does in Peirce's meandering and uncertain drama. The filmmaker makes a gallant effort to speak on behalf of the modern American fighting man, but her own protests drown it out.

Like Peirce's haunting and expertly proportioned debut feature, Boys Don't Cry (1999), her latest movie profiles a child of the American heartland pushed to the fringe. Phillippe (Breach) plays Sgt. Brandon King, a Texas good ol' boy who returns from a hellish tour of duty to proud parents (Linda Edmond and Ciaran Hinds) and a parade through the middle of town. Sure, Brandon is happy to receive his Purple Heart and Bronze Star, but his primary concerns are folksy. The smell of onion fields along the highway. Tasty barbecue.

More to the point, Brandon is dealing with imminent civilianhood in a much healthier fashion than his reservist squad mates, several of whom are also close childhood friends. Steve (Channing Tatum from Step Up) is so jacked up that he digs a "Ranger grave" in his front yard and sleeps in it. Tommy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt from Brick) can't stop hitting the bottle.

Which makes it somewhat jarring when Brandon – informed by his commanding officer (Timothy Olyphant) that he will be forcibly redeployed to Iraq under the government's controversial "stop-loss" policy – immediately loses his cool and goes AWOL.

Huh? Even-tempered, duty-bound Brandon? Due either to Phillippe's famously suck-cheeked acting style or Peirce's episodic screenplay (co-written with journalist Mark Richard), we never get a sign.

Now a fugitive, Brandon hits the road with his best friend's fiancée (Abbie Cornish) and makes a beeline for, of all places, Washington, D.C., to plead his case with a U.S. senator. There will be encounters along the way – a visit with a maimed comrade (Victor Rasuk from Lords of Dogtown); a run-in with a fellow deserter who's also "layin' low," in the parlance of the underground – all of which feel vaguely counterfeit, like supporting paragraphs for a thesis, not natural progressions in Brandon's story.

What's more, Peirce's romantic depiction of macho soldier bonding feels a bit overstated, like somebody waxing poetic about a foreign city they've never visited. Naturally, Brandon and one of his buddies have to duke it out on the grave of a buddy. Es muy macho, no?


Stop-Loss
Stars: Ryan Phillippe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Channing Tatum, Abbie Cornish
Behind the scenes: Directed by Kimberly Peirce, from a script by Peirce and Mark Richard
Rated: R (graphic violence and pervasive language)
Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes
Grade: C