Getting Stop Lossed with Ryan Phillippe

Although Ryan Phillippe appeared in Clint Eastwood's epic war drama Flags of Our Fathers, the combat and conflict experience didn't prepare him for the realism of war depicted in his latest movie Stop Loss. If you've never heard of the term, you're not alone. When young soldiers complete their final tour (or tours) of duty and return home in the hope of settling into life as a war veteran, many find themselves unexpectedly called back to duty against their will and sent back overseas to fight again - "stop lossed" as their endless military cycle continues.

In Stop Loss, Phillippe plays a decorated war hero who's called back to the war and finds himself "stop lossed" as he deals with the toll that his endless tour of duty takes on his life and family. At the film's recent junket, The Deadbolt learned more about the meaning of stop loss, how the film deals with the many political issues within it, whether Phillippe went to boot camp, and the challenge of getting moviegoers to watch war related films at a time of conflict.

Ryan Phillippe on the political issues in Stop Loss:

"What our challenge as actors was, you check your own beliefs and politics at the door. The soldier does that. They go where they’re told and serve to the direction of the person above them. It’s not about whether they agree with what’s happening, that’s not the soldier’s place. I think then the greater aspect of that life becomes keeping the guy next to you alive and him doing the same for you when you’re in a sh*tty situation, where it’s you’re bored in the desert and you’re waiting to be shot at and you’re waiting for something to blow up. I think as unpleasant as all of that gets, the only thing that gets you through it are the friendships, and it is a brotherhood. Sometimes the bonds are stronger than your natural brother and I think that’s why guys end up going back. When they choose to go back, I think it’s out of that sort of obligation to the other soldiers."

Phillippe on whether he went through boot camp before Stop Loss:

"Not really, because on the Eastwood movie, he’s not a big one for prep and rehearsal. Also, I played a medic in that film, so all of my research for Flags of Our Fathers was turnicates and splints and medical books and things. So I’d never been through a boot camp as extensive as this one was. And I say that because we would do fourteen hours a day for that six day week where it was 106 degree weather in the middle of nowhere in Texas. It was pretty intense. Kike from a distance, you would not have thought it was actors preparing for a movie. They really put us through a relatively hardcore training session over those six days, but I loved it. I don’t think the other guys loved it as much as Channing [Tatum] and I did, which is funny because we were sort of the leaders of the squad in the movie and we were really into the physical part of it. And there were guys dragging their feet and they couldn’t hang, and we were right behind them pushing them and helping them out. It's funny when you take the city boys to the country. Rob [Brown] and Vic [Rasuk] are both New York and every single thing freaked them out in Texas in the sticks. Every bug, every sound; it was funny."

On the reality of his character’s choices:

"The reality of that choice speaks to the larger frustration with the way this war has to be fought because the enemy is not clear. You’re not lined up one side against the other. You’re having to go into homes and you’re having to pursue someone - you know, the same guy who looks like a friendly law abiding citizen could also be an insurgent. I think that’s sort of what that sequence is about - is that it’s so random, you don’t know when it’s going to happen. When you think about the IEDs and how an object that looks like a piece of trash on the side of the road and [how] that can destroy a Hummvee and every family can have an assault weapon in Iraq, I think it’s such a random [aspect] in regard to its violence; it’s such a random war that way. There is no right or wrong decision in some regards and I think it’s how the individual or the leader responds after the fact and how it sits with them, I don’t think you could condemn him for doing it. I think procedurally they did the right thing, but whether or not you can [have] peace with that is the question."

Getting Stop Lossed with Ryan Phillippe Page 2