Redacted

Brian de Palma's Redacted ups the ante of protest films, fictionally recounting the rape and murder of a 14-year old Iraqi girl by U.S. soldiers in 2006. Using hand-held camera surveillance footage, Internet videos, excerpts from a French documentary and an Arab TV channel, Islamic fundamentalist websites, and the fictional camcorder diary of a young U.S. private, Redacted lets us know not only about the atrocities of war but about the unreliability of the way in which information is presented in the media and how we cannot trust what we see, even in his film.

Modeled after de Palma's earlier Casualties of War, Redacted searches for a truth in fiction that is deeper than reality-based documentary. Angel Salazar (Izzy Diaz) carries a video camera around shooting whatever he sees hoping to make a documentary that will be his ticket to film school. We are first introduced to his unit: Gabe Blix (Kel O'Neil), Lawyer McCoy (Rob Devaney), Sergeant Jim Sweet (Ty Jones) and good ol' boys, Reno Flake (Patrick Carroll) and B.B. Rush (Daniel Stewart Sherman). The videos make it apparent that our soldiers have lost their sense of purpose and are no longer on solid emotional ground.

The hand held video camera is then replaced by a French documentary about the soldier's routine at checkpoints in Samarra. Suddenly, a speeding car is approaching. Interpreting the signals by U.S. personnel to slow down as meaning they are being waved on through, the car is gunned down, killing a pregnant woman and her unborn child as the driver After a member of Salazar's unit is killed by a bomb, the two men who fired on the speeding car, Rush and Flake, invade the home of an Iraqi family in retribution and to enjoy the "spoils of war". In the middle of the night, they rape and murder a fourteen-year old girl, kill her family, and set the house on fire.

The sensitive Blix does not want to be involved with the mission, and McCoy goes along to try and prevent more harm but fails to stop the violence. Flake and Rush tell the rest of the company that any word of this incident will result in their death. The incident is seen only with a flickering light and the actual assault takes place off camera, but the scene nonetheless elicits a feeling of disgust. As if to try and show that the horrors of war are not limited to one side, de Palma shows the abduction and beheading of a U.S. soldier in very graphic terms. In the final gut wrenching sequence, a montage labeled "Collateral Damage" brings truth and fiction together as we see actual footage of Iraqi war victims mixed with staged deaths and faces that are redacted with black pens.

While Redacted is flawed by inconsistent acting and overly didactic add-ons, its impact is extremely powerful. De Palma indicts both the stupidity of the U.S. government for initiating the war, the complicity of the media in presenting us with a sanitized version of it, and a culture in which such atrocities are permitted to occur. Like the films of French director Bruno Dumont that show how meaningless violence generates more meaningless violence, the visceral impact of Redacted will stay with you for a long time. Slapping us in the face to show us how we have lost touch with the reality of war, the film is full of elemental passion, untidy, disjointed, and at times over-the-top, but in Dumont's words, it returns us "to the body, to the heart, to truth".

The legendary words of Marshall MacLoughan, "The media IS the message", couldn't be further seen played out as in Redacted, Brian De Palma's latest film which ventures the director back into his experimental early days as a filmmaker in New York city. In his film, the media is the message, but only in part- it's about how media is used, or how subjective perceptions are taken into account, for coverage of a conflict which ironically enough has not had the kind of coverage seen in America as in the local Iraq and European media. But what stays true to De Palma as an auteur is the idea of voyeurism, or the watchers and the audience as the ones who continue to watch, and like Godard with his video experiments, Redacted is about its subject but it's also about process.

Like Blair Witch Project, we're seeing things "as-they-happen" by the view-point of a camera that a soldier, Angel, is carrying and using as an in to get into film school someday. This might be enough for a film covering a horrible tragic turn of events like depicted in Redacted, where two soldiers rape a teenager and kill and burn her and her baby sister. But De Palma's story, based on real events which were "fictionalized" up to a point only for legal reasons, indicts the whole process of viewing things through the filter of the lens. Of course there are moments when the characters realize that they're on video, and suddenly they either get irate and continue acting as themselves, or they start to posture for the camera. Instead of the carefully plotted and directed shots of films like Dressed to Kill or Carlito's Way (or, for that matter, the similar-in-premise Casualties of War) we get the messiness of raw camera-work from the soldier, the embedded journalists, the news media covering the story, web-casts obviously out of you-tube, and as the one "official" kind of film-making a French documentary crew doing a film on the group of soldiers covering the checkpoint.

It's suffice to say that this technique is almost a comment on itself, and it's one of the curious ideas behind the experiment of Redacted that makes it interesting. We know that when a security camera or when Angel's camera put on a seat meant to be shut off captures objectively what's going on- like the "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" scene or the plot to go after the family. But there's an inverse to this as well since De Palma is filming this with a script and with actors (who arguably are good at being naturalistic two-dimensional soldiers), since there is a stylization, yet without calling attention to the self-consciousness the audience feels during this. And meanwhile, De Palma makes his anti-war film gripping in the unexpected places; a hard-ass sergeant who gets blown up without any warning at all; the death of one of the soldiers as revenge from a terrorist group; the scene with Flake and Rush where they take the camera themselves and (as proof beyond a doubt that war and repeated tours of duty have made them bat-s***) defend themselves while attempting to praise a fallen brother while one wears a duck hat.

One almost hopes the experiment would work even better as one of the director's best, which ultimately it isn't. Certain tactics, like making evident the pretentiousness of the French documentary by having Barry Lyndon orchestrations playing over, or the girl on the fake you-tube site blasting the soldiers, just don't work at all. And a few of the performances could use some tweaking. But Redacted, I think, has some bad rap attached to it. It's not simply about the obvious, which is that war is hell and brings out the absolute worst out of human beings who have no control over themselves once pushed beyond reason. It's also about the means of viewing something of the ultimate routine nightmare like a checkpoint, or the rape of the girl (so much that Angel can't even watch as the "fly on the wall"), or a questioning, that makes it a significant effort. De Palma distinguishes his film, for better or worse, by adding the connotation of what it means to watch, or what it means to get on record, or what it does to break the 'fourth wall' while questioning it during it. It has the same free-form ambition of De Palma's best experimental work- Hi, Mom!- if not much a great film in the end.

One thing's for sure- it's in a rightful place playing only in one theater in New York city; it's the kind of work that is hard to market beyond playing as an experimental piece. Ironically, as of late, it's been attacked by Bill O'Reilly WHILE it's being advertised during the show! Talk about counter-programming for an audience that, for the most part, until it's out on DVD, won't have a lick of what the picture really entails. Message?

The thing we know for sure about de Palma is that there are no accidental or unintentional images, cuts, camera angles or words in his movies. What looks rough was intended to look rough. What looks like a careless frame was there to look careless. This film, like "Hi Mom" & "Greetings" (and even "Get to Know Your Rabbit) is not part of the Hollywood so many "reviewers" leaving their drivel in IMDb (aka the un-united statesmen) are either railing against or rallying behind.

As far as I could tell, this was a look at the world through De Palma's own Snake-eyes - via a camera, and a script HE wrote. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that a view of the world from his camera will not look like anybody else's, and most surely won't be subject to anybody else's rules or political agenda.

Back in the day when Martin Scorsese made "The Last Temptation of Christ," I got cornered next to a conversation of religious conservatives who were ranting about the "Jews who control of Hollywood" being behind Scorsese's film. I had to laugh -- and did. They all turned to look at me like I was next in line for the noose -- and so I pointed out that Scorsese was New York Italian Catholic -- and had contemplated the priesthood. And that he'd made so much money and reputation points for studios that no studio, executive, or other influencing body could or would try to influence or control the content of his films.

So again, there's a laugh here if you think De Palma is the tool of any studio, influential group, or left-wing agenda. The truth is, each filmmaker has a point of view that is their own - - or at least the ones who make the films we want to see.

And -- if you think Hollywood -- that herd of cats who make the entertainment which may well be our last exportable natural resource -- is wrangled into the lock-step of an agenda other than making money and making entertainment, then you've obviously never met a writer, an actor, a musician, an artist, a computer nerd, a designer, a makeup artist, a stunt coordinator, or an agent. As a group, the only thing they have in common is lust for MAKING. Individually -- their beliefs are as varied as Tom Cruise and Tom Waits. And their personal agendas may sometimes reach the light in the projector -- or the flash of paparazzi cameras -- or the blare of a talk show microphone.

But the statements made in these point-of-view films are artworks giving voice and image to the mind of the artist. Like Guerneca, Rhapsody in Blue, or Oliver Twist -- art is not just entertainment, beauty, or cleverness -- it is the expression of a personal agenda by its very nature. Artists are meliorists. They believe they can, and that they have the right, to change the world.

so get over yourselves. It's not a plot. It's free speech. And Brian De Palma has always been enamored of not so much speaking his mind -- as filming his mind.

"Redacted" is a shattering, powerful experience. It has been criticized by some as painful to watch...but I think that is the point entirely.

For too long, Americans have been spoon-fed a steady diet of lies about the Iraq War (not least about why we invaded that nation in the first place).

De Palma aims to shows us another side to this terrible conflict; one that we won't get on Fox News (or any of the other corporate propaganda networks). It's about time Americans got another point of view on Iraq, because we're hopelessly misinformed about what's going on there (an astonishing number of Americans including a majority of Fox News viewers STILL believe to this day that Saddam was behind 9/11). My friends in Europe don't believe me when I tell them this.

Incidentally, I don't think a film has to be pleasant to watch to be a memorable cinema experience. For example, Fassbinder never made a "entertaining" film, and yet his movies are among the most powerful in all of cinema.

The Iraq War is a horror story of untold magnitude. This film aims to capture the nightmare of the ever-shifting, chaotic Iraq battlefield. It's a film that will be hated, in knee-jerk fashion, by the Bush worshiping nut-case right-wing fringe. But for the rest of us, it's a must-see, powerful and brave film.

I would give this movie 10 stars for the courage that the producers had shown to reveal the truth about was going on there in Iraq.

First of all I am an Iraqi who witnessed everything that happened since the first moment the war took place. I am not an American who is in favour of certain political wing or party. And it is really frustrating to hear those voices picking holes in De Palma's movie and accusing him of being biased or not knowing how the army operates or..or ..or ..etc. You don't need to know anything to be human!! and to stop killing, supporting, or covering for the killing of the innocents.

It is not about elections and politics!! it is about hundreds of people getting killed daily by different groups whether Al-Qaeda, the militias, death squads, or the coalition forces themselves!! The movie was so touching in every single aspect for an Iraqi who had lived there and witnessed the war. The combination of bad and good soldiers is so true. And choosing Sammara rather than any other province or city was so wise since the pressure and threat that the soldiers are under there is not the same for soldiers who are in rather safer areas like the Northern part of Iraq. Also the psychological pressure that most of those soldiers are under has been made clear in this movie; as well as, the negativity, hostility and racism of some soldiers..If you are an Iraqi who understands English, you can understand what the American soldiers mumble or yell about every time an Iraqi approaches them. You can tell from the look whether that soldier is a good or a bad one. Something that has been successfully shown and well presented in that movie.

Like most of the people who support the American army there and consider every Iraqi or Muslim a terrorist or "desert nig**r" or "rag head", most of the Iraqis and Muslims consider every troop a thief, raper, and occupier who is after money, oil and damaging or destroying Islam. But does that mean that they are right? they are both wrong!! All the movie did is that it put the reality of what is going on in Iraq in to cinema cause not all people follow the news or know which media to be trusted; moreover, it didn't say that those stories or characters are true or ever existed. And you don't need De Palma or the Fox news to tell you that!! May be it is true that they might not know a lot about Iraq, but what makes you think that you know better than them about Iraq??!!..

Another true and clever thing about the movie were the videos posted on the internet whether for the insurgents, soldiers' wives, or the people who oppose such disgraceful crimes. Also how, in the end, the innocent soldiers were the ones who pay for the crimes that their teammates commit whether physically (Salazar) or psychologically (McCoy).