REDACTED

For A Quartet Of U.S. Troops In The Chaos Of Iraq, A Full Metal Meltdown

The Popcorn Reel Movie Review: "Redacted"

By Omar P.L. Moore/November 16, 2007

 

Top photos: Ty Jones as Sergeant Sweet, Daniel Stewart Sherman as B.B. Rush
Bottom photos: Kel O'Neill as Private Gabe Blix, and, the opaque photo of the graphic bloodshed of victims felled in Iraq, as seen in U.S. and many other nations' mainstream newspapers and news broadcasts.  (Photos: Magnolia Pictures)

Brian De Palma is justifiably angry about the way events have transpired in Iraq over the last four and a half years, as well as the way the U.S. mainstream media has reported them, and the fury that is his film "Redacted" is strongly felt in one or two sequences, but is ultimately unfocused, which makes his new film overall a disappointment.  "Redacted" is a dramatization of the real-life rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl in Iraq by four U.S. soldiers in March 2006.  Using unknown actors, "Redacted" fuses multiple perspectives surrounding the same horrific event in question -- via Internet webcams, embedded journalists, a European news agency, an Al-Jazeera-type news station, a French documentary film, a military barracks observation camera, and a camcorder point of view from one of the soldiers themselves, Salazar (Izzy Diaz), who charismatically documents "the truth about what is going on here."  Unfortunately, it is precisely these "Rashomon"-like takes that dilute from -- not direct our attention to -- the intended power of Mr. De Palma's film.
 

There are two very graphic depictions (including an on-camera beheading -- so be warned) that are shown during the 90-minute documentary-like film, a film weakened by the staged set-up of the soldiers as they ruminate, complain, dialogue and argue about what to do in Iraq.  The film would have helped itself immensely had it dialed down the volume on the cacophony of soldier voices by instead running English language subtitles and silencing the voices, or by having music play over the soldiers' every deliberation.  We don't need to know that peer pressure will get to one or two soldiers in the debate over whether to rape the intended victim.  We don't need to know that McCoy (Rob Devaney), a key solder in the film, states that "we're soldiers, ours is not to question, we just follow orders".  The staged aspect of this dialogue and other soldier scenes that include the renegade troops Flake (Patrick Carroll) and Rush (Daniel Stewart Sherman) is a well-worn refrain from one-too-many other war movies, including Mr. DePalma's much better "Casualties Of War".  For his current film, actions speak louder than words -- and far more powerfully, so why not make action and silence a consistent theme throughout "Redacted"?       

Music sets the scene, but it most elegiacally accompanies the film's final moments, yet should have done so throughout -- had minimal dialogue been employed instead of the intense barrage of verbal spitfire -- which is more of a turn off than the graphic violence that we see, at least within the context of the film.  Mr. De Palma's disjointed screenplay is a patchwork quilt -- parts of it are literally taken from quotes in interviews with the actual victim's family (her uncle) -- some of the dialogue comes directly from an October 20, 2006 article in the British newspaper The Guardian about the real-life rape, murder and burning, along with the summary execution (and burning) of the girl's younger sister, mother and father.

Perhaps the following will be an unfair comparison, but last year's "United 93", directed by Paul Greengrass, created more urgency, tension and power from its dramatization of a real-life horror event on September 11, 2001, even though dramatic license is taken in some places during the final frantic moments aboard the fated plane, than anything in the "Redacted" recreation of the real-life events that occurred just last year in Iraq.  Mr. De Palma should have just played things out as they laid, without the noise.  Imagery speaks loudest, and "United 93" is quiet, desperate and painful to watch, whereas "Redacted" sometimes feels exhausting and even exploitative.  "Redacted" even calculatedly has a U.S. soldier character named Blix (Kel O'Neill), likely a not-so-veiled reference to Hans Blix, the former head of the United Nations Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission, who repeatedly stated that Iraq contained no weapons of mass destruction.  The film's Blix is similarly resolute in his own actions and convictions, and stands on principle.  More interesting still, is that Blix the soldier bears a strong resemblance to the former UNMOVIC head, with eyeglasses that bring out the look-a-like candidacy.  Credit the director for throwing a broad, if sprawling portrait of stories that a lot of the American press has not told (unless one listens to Pacifica Radio and Amy Goodman) and for inviting the outrage fueled in the voices that don't often get aired on the evening news in the U.S. and for assembling the perspectives from international media, even if it ultimately doesn't work for "Redacted" as a whole.

In the final analysis, "Redacted" plays more like Distracted -- the multiple media formats collide and add noise to, rather than illuminate or enhance the force and focus of Mr. De Palma's film.  Too bad, for the final two minutes of the film, which actually features less graphic photographs of actual Iraqi victims (with their eyes redacted, against the director's wishes) than those even more disturbing photos on the Internet (just run the Blackle or Google search Iraq war photos and brace yourself for some un-digestible photos), are essentially wasted and by extension trivialized, although the very last image shown is frightening and unforgettable.  As the music rises to a crescendo, this last powerful, shattering photo stirs, burns and destroys a small part of our hearts, accomplishing everything that the previous 88-plus minutes could not.

"Redacted" is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for strong disturbing violent content including a rape, pervasive language and some sexual references.  As noted earlier, be warned -- a scene includes an on-camera beheading.  The film's duration is 90 minutes, a few of those uncomfortable.

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