Oliver Stone‘s anti-Iraq War video spot, sponsored by the MoveOn.org political action group and VoteVets.org, is straightforward but underwhelming. When I first heard Stone would be doing this I was kind of expecting…I don’t know, some kind of pulverizing visual statement that would scream “wake up and listen!” Something that would say “the guy who made Platoon made this.” Maybe some kind of Battle of Algiers-type deal.

Instead, Stone shows us two talking-head closeups of two vets — John Bruhns, a former infantry sergeant who fought in Iraq “starting from day one” in ’03 and realized early on that the presence of U.S,. troops was “wrong, immoral and irresponsible,” and Ron Kovic, the paraplegic Vietnam vet whom Tom Cruise played in Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July, saying that “together we can support the troops” by bringing them home.

I agree — we are disrespecting U.S. soldiers in Iraq by sending and keeping them there — and Stone and the MoveOn-ers are coming from a morally compassionate place, but the primary visual impression in Stone’s piece is that Bruhns has put on weight since his ’03 tour.