Ryan Phillippe wishes more Americans would get angry about the war in Iraq.
“It seems like the public to some degree wants … to ignore it,” the 33-year-old actor said. “As long as it’s not happening directly to you — it’s like out of sight, out of mind.”
Phillippe will try to spread the news with his latest gig. In “Stop-Loss,” opening Friday, he plays Sgt. Brandon King, a decorated hero returning to his Texas hometown after serving five years in Iraq. King is ready to embrace civilian life until the Army orders him back under the controversial “stop-loss” provision.
Military translation: You’ve been screwed, son. Stop-loss is kind of like being told you can’t retire. The government can extend a soldier’s tour past the expiration of the original enlistment.
Phillippe said he hopes the movie opens some minds to what is going on during enlistment.
“The majority of Americans haven’t heard of stop-loss or that that kind of thing goes on … I do think that those things are kept quiet,” he said during a recent interview with reporters in L.A., adding that not even potential soldiers know about the practice.
“[The military] buries it in the contract,” he said. “This is happening now. People were stop-lossed last week. I can guarantee you. That’s what makes [this film] relevant.”
Phillippe, who appeared in the WWII drama “Flags of our Fathers,” decided to make “Stop-Loss” because it is told from a soldier’s perspective.
“There’s no political agenda that way,” he said. “I think it’s a mistake for Hollywood to tell people how to think. You know how you feel about this war or this president. … [‘Stop-Loss’] is telling the human side of the soldier’s story and that’s it. You then draw your own conclusion and wrestle with what you think and feel as you watch it.”
Phillippe appreciated his film’s storytelling even more after meeting real soldiers.
“I think it does become a little more personal when you spend time with guys and you get to know them and you hear the truth of what it’s like to be there,” said Phillippe, who with co-star Channing Tatum interviewed soldiers. “We will never even come close to knowing what it’s like to be there.”
The closest Phillippe came to experiencing a soldier’s life was during a weeklong “boot camp” run by Sgt. Major Dever, a Persian Gulf War veteran who retired in 1998 after 25 years in the Marine Corps. Director Kimberly Peirce sent the actors to the camp near San Antonio.
Phillippe said the training was so intense that he and four co-stars felt more like real soldiers than actors.
“It was 14 hours a day for six days a week where it was 106 degrees,” Phillippe said of the Texas-based training. “… But I loved it. I don’t think the other guys loved it as much as Channing and I did, which is funny because we were really the leaders of the squad in the movie and were really into the physical part of it. There were guys who were dragging their feet and couldn’t hang and we were right behind them pushing them and helping them out.”
Tatum agreed.
“Ryan fell right into it,” said Tatum, who plays King’s best bud and fellow soldier, Steve. “He was our leader in the film and in the camp as well. It was great working with someone who could just transform themselves like that. It was amazing.”
The scenes shot overseas also show that Phillippe and his comrades may have gotten a taste of soldiering. The film shows a raid in a housing complex in Iraq that is bloody and loud.
“We shot the sequence in Morocco during Ramadan,” Phillippe said in an e-mail message to The New York Times. “We were storming real homes and real neighborhoods, and at times I felt like a monster.”
