Stop-Loss

A surprisingly blatant and timely attack, by Hollywood standards, on the Bush era policy of forcing soldiers on their way home back into service in Iraq because there weren't enough troops. A minor film, but not a bad one, featuring fine performances by Ryan Philipe (who manages a surprisingly convincing jock) and best-actor-of-his-generation Joseph-Gordon-Levitt as a troubled young recruit. Ultimately, if falls into the category of other war films whose stories are eclipsed by its agendas: the entire film could be made effectively redundant by a single title card explaining that this monstrously unfair policy exists and that war sucks - which is ironically how the film ends.