The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
Monday, April 7, 2008 - SA
War film has
typical ending
By JEFFREY BLOOMER
Daily Arts Writer
At the end of "Stop-Loss," the screen
fades to black to reveal a series of mes-
sage-movie paragraphs
that cut through the
film's melodrama to a
simple, irrefutable mes- Stop-Loss
sage. When the United
States invokes fine print At Qualityl6
in military contracts to and Showcase
force soldiers back into Paramount
Iraq after they have
completed their tours
(the "stop-loss" of the film's title), we dis-
honor their service and fail to confront
the shortage of soldiers to fight in Iraq in a
morally responsible way.
It doesn't reveal too much to state this
first, because though "Stop-Loss" has
been marketed as if it's "Varsity Blues"
in Iraq, the movie's first few scenes alone
make its sensitive moral outlook clear.
It opens with a young, quintessential-
ly Texan military hero, Brandon King
(Ryan Phillippe, "Crash"), first as he faces
unimaginable violence in Iraq and later
as he returns home to a literal parade of
small-town tribute and military pageant-
ry. He ends up on a stage to receive a host
of compliments from a Washington poli-
tician and honorary adornment from the
military. He isn't much of a speaker, so
his lifelong best friend, Steve (Channing
Tatum, "Step Up"), steps in when Bran-
don can't quite find the right words at
the podium. Everyone in the misty-eyed
audience looks on in sweet recognition of
their heroes' achievements. It's an easy
but infectious moment.
As the night goes on and the tequila
begins to flow, there are hints of discontent
- a character drunkenly strips and digs a
hole in his front yard; another is kicked
out by his wife and casually drives into
poles around his small Texas town - but
everyone still cracks a smile at the end of
the night. Brandon holds his crew togeth-
er, and everything is in its right place. That
seems to be the consensus, anyway, until
the military informs Brandon he has been
stop-lossed back to Iraq on the day he is
supposed to become a civilian. He snaps,
loses his fresh-faced, do-gooder front and
goes AWOL to the increasing detriment of
his dependent friends.
Whose side do you imagine the movie
favors? The cruel, heartless and prob-
ably illegal demands of the U.S. Army or
the man who has seen his friends blown
to pieces in a war he fought for his coun-
try? Even as Brandon begins to descend
into mental chaos and departs on a cross-
country road trip to appeal his case to
Washington, there is never a hint of moral
complexity. All the conflicted emotions
stoke the same sympathy for the film's
young subjects that we share from the
first scene. Some of the young men accept
the military's whims; others do not. Their
positions arrive at a climax where the
movie throws up its arms in calculated,
halfhearted reconciliation.
This would perhaps be less of a surprise
- and less of a stinging disappointment
- if the director weren't Kimberly Peirce,
who with "Stop-Loss" has directed her
first film since her shattering debut, "Boys
Don't Cry." The bare, fiercely independent
and compassionate filmmaker on dis-
play in that movie, here returns in muted
autopilot, evoking old tropes of military
pictures (the damaged veteran headed
for self-destruction, the conflicting small-
town Americana values, the principled
young hero who must overcome his expe-
rience in a war he never really understood)
What happens to
some soldiers upon
returning from the
war in Iraq
without any distinct voice of her own.
When she does diverge from traditional
narration with startling hard-rock photo
montages and nonlinear images of war-
fare, she doesn't take long to revert back
to her derivative vision of the struggles
contemporary soldiers encountered when
they return from Iraq. Faced with the cli-
max she simplytidies up with the sacrifice
of one character for the sake of the recon-
ciliation of everyone else.
Even amid all the platitudes, it's hard
to dismiss "Stop-Loss" wholesale because
of its polished and authentic small-town
atmosphere and the upright emotions it
kindles. Pierce offers boundless empathy
for the people who she views as trapped in
the political crossfire of an endless war of
ideas. But even as she makes an honorable
movie, she does not make a dynamic one,
and that unmistakably blunts the film's
power.
"Army of Two" is the first game
actively marketed as a "co-opera-
tive shooter," which either means
you need a friend to
play or you need to Army of Two
have the patience of
a saint to put up with Xbox 360
the dim-witted intel- EA
ligence of a com-
puter partner. You
control two mercenaries hired to trot
around the globe to real life places
like Somalia, China and Iraq (not just
the "24" and "Call of Duty 4" cop-out
of "somewhere in the Middle East")
where you get paid to blow up shit
and kill terrorist leaders, all the while
unraveling a conspiracy theory that
will surely reveal one of the cast as a
traitor. The control scheme is a more
slippery version of the one found in
"Gears of War," and the entire game
is essentially "Gears" with everyone
wearing skull helmets. Unfortunately,
it's not nearly as good.
Cast of Characters: Players are
given the option of playing with either
Rios or Salem, two mercenaries hired
by the U.S. government to kill every
terrdrist on the planet, because, as
we all know, our military is a bunch
of pansies. Rios looks like a cross
between Fenix from "Gears" and the
Thing from "Fantastic Four" and he's
always saying manly things like
"Stop bitching!" The one doing the
bitching is Salem, who looks
like the lead singer of "The
Starting Line" and enjoys
wearing backwards hats
and saying "bro" at least
once in every line of dia-
logue. Both wear bul-
letproof skull masks
and are actually pret-
ty impressive-looking
video game heroes,
considering that all
the manlybuffimenin
these kinds of games
tend to blur together
over time. The best
part of the game is
that when there's
nothing going on, you can
walk up to your partner
and press A, and they'll do
some sort of hand-pound.
But if you're lucky, they'll
bust out an air guitar solo
together, which could be
one of the best features in
a video game in recent memory.
AGGRO!: There should be a'rule
that any game featuring the word
"aggro" in it from now on is automati-
cally deducted a full star (this comes
after the "aggro kick" found in "Tony
Hawk's Proving Grounds"). But in"
"Army of Two," aggro is something
else and, unfortunately, is quite key
to the game. If you're shooting at ene-
mies with a big gun, they shoot at you
because you have all the aggro (not sure
if you have aggro? Check your handy
aggro-meter). When you have aggro,
you glow bright red like you're about
to explode, and, in contrast, your part-
ner becomes transparent and is able to
sneak around in an almost unfair way
and snipe the enemies attacking you.
And that's 95 percent of the fighting in
"Army of Two." It's an interesting idea,
but starts to feels very repetitive about
20 minutes into the game.
The Buddy System: The whole
"2-player teamwork" aspect of the
game feels very forced. You can tan-
dem parachute, use a car door as a
mobile shield together, go back to back,
unload a spray of bullets ina circle and
boost your partner up to a better snip-
ing perch. But God forbid he dies up
there and you have no way to revive
him. Speaking of which, when play-
ing with a friend you'll constantly be
running back and forth reviving each
other because no one can agree on who
should have the aggro. Unlike "Gears
of War," which involves just one button
press, revival here involves dragging
your partner to safety and waiting for
a little bar to fill up as you inject him
with adrenaline or steroids or some-
thing.
CustomMade, CustomPaid:Since
you're operating as a mercenary rath-
er than a standard solider, it actually
makes sense to receive cash payments
for completing certain objectives
during your missions. Finding a file
crucial for intelligence might net you
$2,000, but taking out a high-profile
terrorist target could land you a cool
10 Gs. You can use this money to buy
new weapons and customize them
with different stocks, ammo clips and
silencers, not to mention the "pimped"
option, which paints your gun chrome
or gold and etches tribal designs on it.
The weapon upgrade system is one of
the best aspects of the game and even
trumps the system found in the far
superior "Call of Duty 4."
Artificial Unintelligence: The
enemy A.I. is downright bizarre in this
game. First of all, there are so many
bad guys it often feels like they're just
popping out of a bottomless pit some-
where. Firefights last upwards of 20
minutes and by the end you feel like
you've killed literally every single
person in Al-Qaeda. They exhibit all
sorts of behavior ranging from the
annoying (poking their gun barrel
out of cover and shooting blindly with
inexplicable pinpoint accuracy) to the
downright strange (they run directly
at you like your bullets are the cure
for some disease they have). The worst
are the enemies they throw in to force
you to use "teamwork," such as the
super soldiers that are bulletproof in
the front but made out of marshmal-
low Peeps in the back, so one player
must distract him while the other cir-
cles around behind. It's reminiscent
of Mario sneaking around Bowser
to grab his tail, but the whole thing
feels stupid when you realize you're'
a mercenary with a Gatling gun, not a
plumber in overalls.
Two-Player heaven?: Here's the
thing: as marginally enjoyable as this
game is, the fact remains that there
are simply much better cooperative
shooters out there. "Gears of War"
was never advertised as a "buddy
' game," but co-op mode was fun
nonetheless. And nothing feels
like a greater accomplishment
than pwning noobs in "Halo
3" doubles online. The
extra doo-ddas "Army
of Two" shoved
into the game
to force it to be
co-op just come off as gim-
micky most of the time, and you
find yourself wanting to play
without having to worry about
what your partner is doingevery
two seconds. Upgrading weap-
ons, killing terrorists/mutants/
space marines and playing with
a friend is fun, but there are
better ways to get your fix than
"Army of Two."
TV shows Detroit's
war on drugs
By JOHN DAAVETTILA
DailyArts Writer
"DEA" is like "Cops," but 35 miles east
of Ann Arbor.
Spike TV has strayed from its path of
visual beauties and dudes beating the
crap out of each other
with its new reality
show, which focuses on
the Detroit division of DEA
the Drug Enforcement
Administration. Cam- Sundays at
eras follow the officers 11 p.m.
through stings and Spike TV
busts, giving the public
- and possibly other
drug dealers - inside information on the
drug enforcement system.
Sadly, though, there are no drunken
car chases involving hillbillies and police
officers, making the show more than a
little boring. Despite the tense techno
music and grainy film effects, "DEA" is
nothing more than one hour of waiting
in cars, chattering on walkie-talkies and
more scenes of officers arming them-
selves than the "Iliad."
Drug busts are enjoyable enough to
watch, but here they're too few and far
between. It's obvious "DEA" can't fill an
entire hour solely with ransacking drug-
dealers, and even the presence of TV
cameras can't entice the Detroit division
to up its game a little bit.
The officers of "DEA" are your usual
gang of cops: the rookie, the street-
smart cop and, of course, the one named
"Woody." But the show reveals an unex-
pected side of the officers as they give
interviews about their families and the
fear they battle with every new raid. They
aren't Chief Wiggums, but the officers of
the DEA end up being pretty likeable.
It's surprising how frank and open the
officers are about their job, especially
when it comes to their strategy of han-
dling criminals. The cops use a method
called "The Flip," which entails persuad-
ing the newly-arrested drug dealer to rat
out their supplier in return for a reduced
or terminated sentence.
The central question of the series
seems to be, "Are we winning the war
on drugs?" The DEA's answer is a pro-
nounced "yes," but the show contradicts
itself. How can we be winning if we con-
stantly let the criminal go for revealing
his supplier? If anything, "DEA" exposes
the problems within the drug enforce-
ment system.
"DEA" may show the excitement of
drug raids, but it also shows the long peri-
ods of waiting and scheming by the offi-
cers. The likeability of the cops and the
undercover actions of the Drug Enforce-
ment Administration don't add up to
Because 'Animal
Cops Detroit' just
isn't enough.
much when placed next to a half hour of
sitting in a van listening to a wired agent
talking to a dealer. Even when the actual
action takes place, it ends up being noth-
ing more than three minutes of swearing,
blurred faces and innumerable threats.
Sitting through the majority of the show
isn't worth it.
It's not easy to find the positives of
"DEA" - unless you're a dealer looking
for an inside scoop. TV has always been a
place for viewers to escape their ho-hum
matters while living vicariously through
others and possibly getting a laugh along
the way. But "DEA" doesn't do any of
those things, and with its depressing
premise and lackluster entertainment
value, only a small demographic would
find this enjoyable.