No one wants to see Iraq war movies. The latest major Hollywood release about Iraq, Stop-Loss, cratered at the box office in its opening weekend, and flop sweat is already pouring by the bucketful from the editing bays where the remaining three Iraq pictures are being readied for release. Conservatives say these movies are failing because their general antiwar stance is offensive to a great many Americans. Liberals say these movies are failing because Americans are so upset by an unpopular war they cannot bear even the thought of it at the multiplex. Box-office analysts make the point that downbeat movies always face an uphill climb.

It is high time to cease the armchair analysis of those who refuse to attend war-in-Iraq movies and ask them directly to explain their behavior. The moviegoer must be permitted to speak. So committed am I to this straightforward approach that I will now attempt it by interviewing--myself.

ME: You were going to see Stop-Loss today.

MYSELF: Yes, I was.

ME: There you were, in a taxicab, driving down Broadway toward the movie theater in Times Square .  .  .

MYSELF: And I told the cab driver to let me out at Columbus Circle. I felt as though I had had an appointment for a root canal and received a cell phone call informing me that my dentist had just been named Client #8 and was pursuing an immunity deal with the U.S. attorney's office.

ME: This is a shocking dereliction of duty! You are the film critic of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

MYSELF: I don't have to see it to do that. I'm about to turn 47. I have seen thousands of movies in my time. Life is too short to spend even two hours in a theater watching Stop-Loss. Its virtues are, I expect, that it is very well made, with vivid scenes of terrifying battles in the streets of Karbala or Falluja--and touching moments of reconciliation. There's probably a well-done scene in or just outside a Wal-Mart. Its failings are that it tells a schematic story that stacks the deck.

ME: What do you mean?

MYSELF: The movie is about American military personnel who serve tours of duty in Iraq and then are compelled by the policy of "stop loss" to return there. Our hero begins as a gung-ho guy and ends up going AWOL. In other words, he grows in office. He begins by obeying orders in an unjust war and ends by breaking the law to protest injustice. He begins immature and ends mature. He begins a conservative and ends a leftist. He begins in a red state and ends up Code Pink. He begins--

ME: All right! Enough with the parallel sentence structure. You gathered all that from reviews?

MYSELF: I haven't read a single review. This is from three trailers and a few minutes watching Showbiz Tonight.

ME: So it's schematic. Most movies that feature a character taking a "journey," following an "arc" that causes his growth as a human being, are schematic.