The Iraq War, in Hollywood's Theater

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The War on Film

A look at Hollywood's recent spate of movies that touch on the war on terror, a list that includes few bona fide box office hits.

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Steven Bochco, the celebrated TV writer-producer who created "Over There," says it's difficult to create a drama about a war when viewers are witnessing the real thing in real time. "In hindsight," Bochco says, "my general feeling is that people were seeing horrific images [from the war] on TV every day on the news, and it was depressing, and it was very realistic." With that as backdrop, he says, a series about the war "was more than people wanted to take in."

Bochco suggests that Americans feel "a certain sense of powerlessness" about the war's direction that may fuel their indifference to dramatic portrayals of it.

With an eye toward America's war-weariness, Paramount Pictures has downplayed Iraq in its marketing of "Stop-Loss." The trailer for the film, which was directed by Kimberly Peirce ("Boys Don't Cry"), contains a few scenes of combat, but emphasizes the attractive young cast and the small-town Texas setting. The theatrical poster shows the film's leads lounging on the hood of a car. It looks more like a scene from TV's "Friday Night Lights" than a military drama.

That's a smart approach, says Brandon Gray, president and publisher of Box Office Mojo, a movie-tracking online publication. Gray thinks "Stop-Loss," which has been heavily marketed to teens and 20-somethings through MTV Films, could be the first film to escape the fate of other Iraq movies. "It's a more intimate human drama than a preachy political film," Gray says. "It seems to be a more relatable picture than what we've seen so far about Iraq."

Peirce says the subject of Iraq isn't as problematic as the way it has been sold by movie marketers. "It's my job to entertain the audience," the director says. "That to me seemed to be the thing they didn't seem to find -- the thing that touches your heart or makes you say, 'I want to go see this because I want to get involved in that emotional experience.' "

She adds, "If you go back to the great war movies [she cites 'The Best Years of Our Lives' and 'Patton,' among others], I don't think it's an inherently difficult topic. I just think you have to find the humanity in it. There's a huge amount of humanity in conflict, in the families who are sending people over, what the culture here goes through and what goes on over there. You just have to find a way in."

Even with such an erratic track record, more films about the war are on their way. "The Hurt Locker," about an elite American bomb-disposal squad, recently completed production. "The Return," with Rachel McAdams as an Iraq war veteran, is scheduled for release early next year. In July, HBO will air a seven-part miniseries, "Generation Kill," based on journalist Evan Wright's account of the first few weeks of the American invasion. And Paul Greengrass ("The Bourne Ultimatum," "United 93") is currently filming a movie version of the book "Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone," by Washington Post staffer Rajiv Chandrasekaran. It stars Matt Damon.

Film historian Jonathan Kuntz of UCLA points out that most memorable war films appear many years after a conflict ends, when the nation has had time to reflect on the experience and a historical consensus emerges about the war's successes and failures.

The classic films about Vietnam -- starting with "The Deer Hunter," "Coming Home" and "Apocalypse Now" in 1978 and 1979 and ending with "Born on the Fourth of July" in 1989 -- came out years after the last U.S. serviceman had left the battlefield. "M*A*S*H," which was essentially an anti-Vietnam film but set in the Korean War, was released nearly 20 years after the Korean armistice.

But the outcome in Iraq remains an open question, with America's military commitment to the country under constant debate.

For now, Kuntz agrees with Bochco: "We're bombarded by information about [Iraq] 24 hours a day," he says. "We already know plenty about it. We don't need to learn more about it from the movies. Right now, it's something people want to forget and escape from. I speak for the American public when I say, 'What a bummer.' "

John Anderson contributed to this report.