One of the most impressive and potentially world-changing aspects of the internet is the chance it offers for individuals to make their voices heard above the drone of the mainstream. It’s the underground press of our time. The print won’t rub off on your fingers, but with any luck maybe some of the best thoughts will rub off on our attitudes. Here’s a link to Frank J. Avella’s passionately felt review of Stop-Loss at newyorkcool.com.
At one point Peirce uses a song by country superstar and resident war-monger, Toby Keith to highlight just how misguided so many of our young men were post-September 11th. The ditty, “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American),” was written to inspire our boys to want to seek revenge for that tragedy. The problem was it also asked us to blindly trust a President with his own agenda. And while Keith never had to take responsibility for the blood on his hands, true Americans like the Dixie Chicks were vilified and demonized for speaking out against an unjust war and a horrific President.
Stop-Loss has the guts to say certain things that desperately need to be said. It is not only the best film of 2008 to date, it happens to be the first relevant film to deal with the Iraq War.
That’s the kind of writing you’re not likely to see in The Wall Street Journal or The New York Post.