My Movie Week: March 28-April 3, 2008

by Bill Henry on Apr.04, 2008, under Bill Henry's Movie Reviews

Reviews of Stop-Loss, 21, and Praying With Lior at the Avalon

This week’s entry in the category of superior movies due to be ignored by audiences is Kimberly Peirce’s Stop-Loss (3.5* in nationwide release). Following in the building tradition of The Situation, The Road to Guantanamo, The Ground Truth, No End in Sight, and In the Valley of Elah, exceptional film work is being pushed on an audience increasingly dedicated to proving that it does not want to dwell on the wretchedness of our current government… at least while it is still ongoing.

Stop-Loss has to do with a group of soldiers returning to their Texas hometown after a time in Iraq. Their leader, Sgt. Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe) is looking forward to the completion of his 2^nd Middle Eastern tour of duty. Having completed his term of enlistment, King envisions returning to small-town life and the family ranch. But following the parades and medal ceremony, Sgt. Brandon is informed that he is being returned to Iraq with his unit and is told that he has been “stop-lossed.”

This too little known stratagem allows the army to retain soldiers against their will and beyond the terms of their contracted service so as to avoid either running out of troops or instituting a politically unfeasible draft. Great, now that we are all vicariously enjoying our government’s indulgence in torture, kidnapping, rule by fiat, peremptory invasion, etc., our military has decided to add date rape. It would serve us right if every man and woman in uniform publicly declared that they had gone gay—all of a sudden.

Director-screenwriter Peirce (making her first feature since the acclaimed Boys Don’t Cry) and screenwriter Mark Richard exhibit the proper amount of outrage for the injustices committed against our most loyal and dedicated citizens (our dear leader’s darling daughters, the First Drunks, would never have to worry about being stop-lossed). They start King on an underground journey to explore his options (appeal to the senator who showed up for the medal ceremony, desertion, new identity, Canada, just lying back and enjoying it—the military’s recommended response) while revisiting some of his comrades all of whom have some variety of scarring caused by fighting a goalless war under impossible circumstances for leaders who show that they view your humanity as equivalent to any other piece of equipment (use it until it breaks or wears out and then discard).

Feel free to ignore all of the above. One can hardly blame the makers of Stop-Loss for trying to inject a little beefcake into the mix in hopes of getting audiences to embrace a film that is both good and good for them. However it already seems doomed to failure.

My fatalistic views towards the continuing efforts of our filmmakers to try to make sense of our ongoing Iraqi futility aside, one cannot help but recall that it took a few years separation from the fall of Saigon before audiences began to embrace the first run of movies about the Vietnam War. Something I am sure that I share with the Hollywood filmmakers (and the stop-lossed troops who manage to survive) is a desire to know when that period will begin.

I am on safer ground recommending 21 (3* in nationwide release), a modern-day Faustian tale adapted from Ben Mezrich’s non-fiction book Bringing Down the House. Unable to help themselves, the filmmakers ginned up the action a little, but still have delivered a serviceable thriller with a heavy dose of teenage wish fulfillment fantasy. Ben (Jim Sturgess from Across the Universe) is looking at six figure post-graduate study tuition if he wants to add M.D. to his MIT BS. But that will mean selling a lot of ties and shirts at his after class haberdashery job (even with the pay bump from his recent promotion to assistant manager). His math professor, Mickey Rosa (a deliciously devilish Kevin Spacey), has a better idea. A keen spotter of talent, Dr. Mickey wants Ben to join his little group of students who make weekend trips to Las Vegas and use Mickey’s methods to beat the house at blackjack.

Soon the money is rolling in and the Vegas lifestyle begins to eclipse Ben otherwise well-grounded life. And with movie inevitability, the breathless ascent up good-life mountain will suffer a fall, but only after the stereotypical failing of your real friends and the requisite speech.

An enjoyable story, 21 losses points for the cookie cutter fashion in which the plot is resolved. But further harm is caused by director Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde) and adapting scenarists Peter Seinfeld and Allan Loeb unnecessary ginning up of the action to melodramatic heights. The conspiracy of revenge Spacey cobbles together to put his protégé in his place seems more a house of cards while the concluding revenge seems to fly in the face of what we know about current-day Vegas.

Still, the movie’s charms overwhelm the shortcomings and can be recommended as an entertaining time-waster.

Better to go out on a more positive note. Usually when a movie theater closes, that is it. The new tenant moves in and only a few geezers remember as they pass by when they used to go to the movies there. A happy exception to this is the Avalon in the Chevy Chase section at the District’s edge. Built, twinned, rebuilt, sold many times, closed, refurbished, and reopened as a neighborhood asset, the new Avalon has become a place where many smaller movies get a chance to be seen on one of the city’s largest screens.

One of the gems the Avalon has helped is Praying with Lior (3.5* in exclusive release). An outstanding documentary, Praying with Lior focuses on Lior Liebling, a Philadelphia-area teenager preparing for his bar mitzvah. Complicating his efforts is the fact that Lior has Down syndrome. But overwhelming these challenges is what Lior does have: an incredibly loving family (even bratty little sister who worries that she is not getting enough attention), a supportive congregation, and a love of God that seems to imbue every frame of Ilana Trachtman’s film.

Rather than receiving the typical one week and gone treatment that documentaries not featuring penguins generally receive, Praying with Lior has been extended at the Avalon. But you should not depend on their largess forever.