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Hollywood will never learn. A string of anti-war box office disasters like In the Valley of Elah, Rendition, A Mighty Heart, Lions for Lambs, and even The Kingdom, couldn't induce a studio to put up the stop light on Stop-Loss. As Deadline Hollywood put it, Stop-Loss was DOA.

The movie opened at #7 — which means it got slammed by many retread movies — and the greatest hope now is that it will make a paltry $4 million or so for the weekend. Pathetic, and wholly expected. I'd guess that "star" Ryan Phillipe alone was paid more than that. But an anonymous studio source had an excuse for the debacle that was probably prepared weeks ago:

“No one wants to see Iraq war movies. No matter what we put out there in terms of great cast or trailers, people were completely turned off. It’s a function of the marketplace not being ready to address this conflict in a dramatic way because the war itself is something that’s unresolved yet. It’s a shame because it’s a good movie that’s just ahead of its time.”

Ahead of its time, eh? But aren't we told constantly that a majority of Americans are against the war? If that's true, this should be the perfect time to put out an endless parade of anti-war films. Perhaps that's not the case. Maybe the American public is starving for movies that find a "dramatic way" to reflect the heroism of our troops. Yet it seems no number of consecutive flops will move plots in that direction — just as an experiment. Oh, well. Hollywood hasn't made a decent pro-America-at-war film in 50 years. The institutional knowledge has died out, I guess.

But the apologias for Stop-Loss are not confined to the fools who made it. The reviewer at the Miami Herald gave readers this howler:

While obviously admiring the valor and devotion of our fighting men and women, “Stop-Loss” makes no judgment about the rightness of the war in Iraq. But it generates a good deal of contempt for a system that rewards its soldiers by betraying them. A credit at the end of the film estimates that 81,000 soldiers have been stop-lossed back to Iraq.

If you don't think that characterization is laughable on its face — especially the bit about how the movie admires the "valor and devotion" of our troops — we'll let our friends at Patterico Pontifications recount how that very reviewer lays out some plot summary for us:

“Stop-Loss” ... recounts how the heroes come home from Iraq only to engage in endless drunken brawls. One goes AWOL to protest the stop-loss policy and another abandons his girlfriend for a foxhole in his front yard where he “curls up in his underwear, cradling a bottle and a loaded handgun.”

Sure. Your typical veteran will assume the fetal position in his tightie whities cradling a fifth of jack. A very "heroic" depiction. But one more laugher, if you'll indulge me. Trey Ellis, a blogger at The Huffington Post, came away from the movie quite upset.

I left the film seething at George Bush, a dope like me who had romantic notions about faraway wars.

Yeah. If there's one thing Puffington Host bloggers are known for, it's their "romantic" notions of war. Sheesh. Even Ellis has posted several times ripping Bush, Cheney, this "briar patch" war, etc. Does he think people won't look this stuff up?