Peirce battles a war-weary audience

Kimberly Peirce is no stranger to dark and difficult subject matter. In her 1999 directorial debut, "Boys Don't Cry," she dramatized the double life and murder of Brandon Teena, a woman living as a man, guiding Hilary Swank to a best-actress Oscar. But creating a movie about Iraq war veterans that acknowledges the brutal reality of urban warfare without alienating war-weary audiences was a challenge unlike any she has faced.

"Stop-Loss," about a war hero ordered back to duty in Iraq against his will, weighs the moral choices soldiers face in combat and after they return home. Peirce had unfiltered personal access to the realities of modern warfare because her brother Brett enlisted in 2003 and fought in Iraq for a year.

"He brought back videos that the soldiers had shot hand-held. In an unadulterated way they were filming their experience. They'd go back to the barracks and cut it to music," either patriotic workingman's country by Toby Keith or driving rock from Drowning Pool or Prodigy. Those images informed the film's opening scenes, which quick-cut through a slaughterhouse apartment building battle.

"I was aiming for a you-are-there feeling," said Peirce, a longtime New Yorker who began planning a military-themed movie shortly after Sept. 11. "They're media-saturated, but the kids of this generation feel they're not getting access to the experience of their soldiers."

After that baptism by fire, the film becomes a character-centered story in a small Texas town where a group of returning soldiers struggle to make peace with civilian life. Peirce, who has previewed her film in 22 cities nationwide, reports that early viewers have thanked her for "making it mostly about coming home, for not sinking us too deeply into that war because we really don't want to be there." Her job, she said, was "to make it real," but added "I don't need to brutalize the audience."

Ryan Phillippe plays war hero Sgt. Brandon King, who must decide between having his tour extended or going AWOL and fleeing the country. Peirce learned about the Army's involuntary retention program when her brother text-messaged her a story about a friend who had been stop-lossed.

Peirce, who had toyed with the idea of making a documentary, interviewed scores of soldiers during her research. She has invited them to be in her test audiences, and said their response to the film -- antiwar but pro-enlisted man -- has been gratifying.

"They think of Hollywood as being against the military," she said. "They said, "Thank you for telling our story. Thank you for not making us look like monsters.' "

Colin Covert • 612-673-7186