"Stop-loss" is sometimes known as a back-door draft.

Sgt. Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe) walked into the U.S. Army through the front door, is heading for the exit and doesn't want to be shoved in again through the back.

He served his time, led his men, earned a Purple Heart and Bronze Star, was honored with a welcome-home parade in his native Texas town and is turning in his gear when he hears the news that he's being ordered back to Iraq.

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'Stop-Loss'

2 1/2 stars = Average
Ratings explained

• Starring: Ryan Phillippe, Channing Tatum, Abbie Cornish.
• Rating: R for graphic violence and pervasive language.
• Web site: 'Stop-Loss'

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He's being stop-lossed, which means the Army is extending his tour of duty. "This, sir, is bull ... and you know it," King says, just about the time he's informed he will be taken to the stockade for disobeying orders and being a flight risk.

He flees all right and anguishes over what to do, even as the men in his unit have their own rocky return to life stateside.

"Stop-Loss," from the director of "Boys Don't Cry," celebrates soldiers in all their youthful bravery, patriotic duty and platitudes ("We're over there killing them in Iraq so we don't have to kill them in Texas") and unbridled impulses toward drink, anger, fights and flashbacks.

King is just one of the Army soldiers in "Stop-Loss." The others include Steve Shriver (Channing Tatum), King's best friend and high school football teammate, and Tommy Burgess (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who boozes and brawls. On the sidelines, until she's forced front and center, is Michele (Abbie Cornish), Steve's fiancee.

Although the movie opens in Tikrit, Iraq, it spends most of its time in the States dealing with the consequences of battle, relationships that may be a casualty of war, and choices faced by King and others.

"Stop-Loss" stacks the deck against the powers that be, whether it's a commanding officer or a U.S. senator who makes promises he cannot or will not keep. This is a soldier's story with the best of intents but not always execution.

Writers Kimberly Peirce, also the director, and Mark Richard try to shoehorn everything in: the danger of urban warfare, the shocking disabilities, the camaraderie of soldiers, the demons that trail them home or resurface there, the unfairness of the stop-loss policy, even the ancient truth that "war is old men talking and young men dying."

That leads to soldiers serving as stand-ins for problems -- this one drinks too much, that one lost limbs for a land where his family lacks green cards, this one prefers military to civilian life, this one has been on the run with his wife and children.

The structure of the story -- battle, warm welcome home, wobbly readjustment, decision-making -- also crunches everything into a compressed time period that doesn't seem to allow for pursuit of or even talk about counseling.

"Stop-Loss" proves heavy-handed, but it's built around an appealing, age-appropriate cast, led by Phillippe, who played a World War II soldier in "Flags of Our Father," and Tatum, the pleasant surprise of the movie. He comes of age here after starring in tween and teen bait such as "Step Up" and its sequel and "She's the Man."

No director, including Peirce, has managed to make a "Platoon" for the Iraq War generation. Maybe that's impossible in 2008, but Peirce makes a very noble, heartfelt attempt.