Stop-Loss is a measure the American government uses to extend the enlistment of members of its armed forces when a national emergency requires it. Iraq is a national emergency and this is the story of Brandon King, a squad leader (Ryan Phillippe) who returns from the war hoping to be demobbed but instead gets the Stop-Loss treatment.

Though a patriot and a regular guy, he is sent bananas by the news. He gets drunk, fights his mates and finally drags his fiancée (Australian actress Abbie Cornish) up to Washington to try to persuade his Texas senator to do something about it.

We first see King and his men chasing gunmen in Tikrit and being led into an ambush on the narrow streets of the town. If they fire, civilians will almost certainly be hurt. If they don’t, they are dead men. Back in America, all of those who survive are affected by the experience, and King’s line about “that box in your head where you put the bad stuff you can’t deal with” gains relevance throughout.

The director of this honest and hard-hitting film is Kimberly Peirce, who made the multi-award-winning Boys Don’t Cry. She doesn’t take sides but suggests that war affects even good soldiers badly after the ticker-tape welcome home and the hugs of proud relatives die down.

None of the American movies about the war has been a success at the box office and one fears for this. But it is worth seeing for the acting of Phillippe, Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Peirce’s impressive, documentary-like direction. She clearly feels the pain and shows it without recourse to either melodrama or sentimentality.