By Fred Topel | Image property of Paramount Pictures
At 34, Ryan Phillippe is just past the typical age of young recruits going into the military. As the center of Stop-Loss, he plays Brandon King, leader of a troop trying to readjust to home life after Iraq. When Brandon gets stop lossed, he tries to fight having to return to war.
Ryan Phillippe Talks Stop-Loss
"One of the reasons why it would make sense for me to lead this group of guys is because I’ve been around a little longer, I’m older and I’m a father," said Phillippe. "I think there are those aspects that I feel fraternal towards these guys. I support them, want to see them do well, know the enormous future ahead of him, can't wait to see it happen. Think Joe Gordon Levitt is one of the best young actors out there. It's like I am that way by my nature. I am not competitive and want to see the people I care about do as well as they possibly can. I think there is part of a leader of a squad that is like that. You want to protect, you have the fatherly instinct toward those guy and you want to help and see them ascend and achieve and I think that kind of made some sense. It was sort of a built in aspect to who I am that I guess could relate to Brandon."
Otherwise, Brandon is a very different guy from Ryan. "I think he's probably a guy who's pretty confident in his abilities to kind of keep a level head through distress and that. I think he's probably a better guy than me in terms of always doing the right thing, just very straightforward. And then I think all of that is compromised by the situation he finds himself in. I look less to what I relate to in a character, because then you kind of get into judgments. It's kind of really just figuring out how this person would get through this situation."
Stop-Loss
Stop-Loss
Stop-Loss
Ultimately, Phillippe just wanted to do his part to get this story out. "For me it always starts with the script. I think without that, there's nowhere to go. I thought it was really beautifully and honestly written. I loved the fact that it was about the soldiers, from the soldiers' perspective. It wasn't bogged down by an agenda politically and it wasn't telling you how to think or feel about the situation we're in as a country. It was more: This is the human plight of the soldier and what they're going through and something that's very relevant because it's happening now and I'm sure last week there were people stop lossed, and next week there [will be]."
Withholding a judgmental point of view will hopefully make Stop Loss stand apart from other recent Iraq war movies. "I think that's also what separates us from some of the other Iraq themed films that have come before us. Those did seem to have sort of been telling you something or preaching. I think that's insulting, the idea of Hollywood doing that. I don't think Hollywood needs to tell people how to think or feel about an issue if you present it and allow the individual to make up their mind. Ours is about the soldier and that's it."
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