影视英语听力 第51期：Stop-Loss 止损

在漫长的伊拉克战争中终于盼到兵役期满回国的布兰顿·金，本打算在德州老家重新营造起曾经逝去的平静生活。但根据美军“止损条例”的一纸调令又彻底粉碎了他的美好愿望。

对话文本:

Stop-Loss is a new film directed and co-written by Kimberly Peirce. It's her long-awaited follow-up to Boys Don't Cry, her debut which came out in 1999. Stop-Loss is the latest in a series of movies dealing with the war in Iraq. And like a lot of those movies, it's uneven, it's well-intentioned, but it also has a lot of energy and conviction and some very good performances, including above all by Ryan Phillippe who is not an actor, who always brings a lot of feeling orauthenticity to his roles, but here he is really quite good.

Phillippe plays a squad leader. We first see him and his fellow soldiers in Tikrit in Iraq where they are in the middle of a bloody firefight where some of them are killed and others are wounded, and he and his buddies go back rather shaken but also relieved to be home to Brazos, Texas, his hometown where he and his best buddy, played by Channing Tatum, reunite with Tatum's fiancée who's played by the Australian actress Abbie Cornish.

And what happens next is that Phillippe's character discovers that he's been stop-lossed, which means that he has been called back for another troop duty.

And this precipitates the movie's long somewhat unconvincing middle. He goes AWOL with his best friend's fiancée. There is a lot of agonizing about what he is gonna do, is he gonna go back.

At this point the movie starts to thunder a little bit and there is a lot of speechifying and big emotional scenes and in the end Stop-Loss never quite arrives at any resolution, but this in a way is part of the movie's honesty since the war itself has not arrived at much of a resolution.

In addition to Phillippe's performances, there are other very good ones. Abbie Cornish is excellent although she has a little bit of trouble with the Texas accent .And Joseph Gordon-Levitt is as always terrific as a younger more unstable member of the squad.

And all in all this movie has a lot going for it .I think we still are waiting for the movie that really captures the full range of emotions and ideas and problems associated with the war in Iraq. But given the way the war is going, there is probably plenty of time for someone to make that movie and get it out there.