In your opinion, what are some games/books/movies/etc that tried to send a specific message through the narrative, but failed spectacularly?

As an Iraq War veteran I don't understand why so many movies about the war are so utterly terrible. I assume it's because a lot of them came out while the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were still going on. I think we still have troops in both places but the fighting seems to be settling down. Anyway, there's one movie about the the recent wars (mostly Iraq) that started out having a message (albeit it was a really stupid message) and then completely pussied out and just took a total left turn. Or right turn?

The movie was called Stop Loss and it sucked in a thousand ways without it losing its nerve. Basically it's about a Staff Sergeant who returns from Iraq and is told upon coming home that his enlistment, which is set to end, has been extended indefinitely and he has to return to Iraq immediately. Feeling screwed by his predicament he decides to go awol. And while on the run he meets a secret cabal of awol soldiers, sympathetic civilians and their families who help soldiers flee to Canada to avoid the titular "Stop Loss".

The entire movie spends all of its running time hammering home the point the Stop-Loss practice is both unjust and unfair to the brave men who served their country so valiantly. Men who did their jobs and then were told that they were being forced to continue doing it until they either die or get wounded. It's worse than the draft. At least with the draft once your time is up you're honorably discharged.

And the entire time the main character is struggling with his decision to run. He feels like a coward and is dishonoring the Army. So what does the movie do? After spending two hours telling you how fucked up stop-loss is and how the men who run are actually brave for standing against an unjust system it pulls a 180 and says "Yep, I'm a shit-bag coward and I'm going to return to my unit and do the right thing. Luckily, for some reason I'm not going to get into trouble for going awol despite being chased by military police".

TL;DR "Stop-Loss" is a poorly written, poorly directed and poorly acted piece of shit that spends its entire run time telling viewers how shitty Stop-Loss is and has you rooting for a character who is sticking it to the man by running away to freedom only to say "Psych, never mind. He's not a shit-bag coward. He's going back to bravely do his duty".

/r/AskReddit Thread