Directed by: Brian DePalma
Premise: A fictionalized account of a United States
army squad in Iraq that massacred a family and raped a teenage girl.
What Works: The way Redacted is told is very
innovative. Rather than following the characters around with an omniscient
camera, Redacted uses source material, assembling the story through a
soldier’s video diary, news reports, security camera footage, and online
videos. The transition between these sources is surprisingly smooth and the
cumulative result is a film that plays like Causalities
of War meets Cannibal
Holocaust or The
Blair Witch Project. This combination is effective and it speaks to the
way in which we consume and react to information about the outside world, and
especially how coverage of the Iraq War has been disseminated.
What Doesn’t: Although it may seem strange to say
this about a film with such a grave subject matter, Redacted does get a
bit heavy handed in parts, especially in its score which goes for intrusive
melodrama when a subtle sound would have complemented the visuals more
effectively. The larger trouble of the film is trying to deduce a message or
point to the film, aside from the obvious statement about the brutality of war
and the ugliness of sexual abuse. In its form, the film attempts to capture the
experience of the Iraq War both for these soldiers and for the culture, and to
some extent it accomplishes that. Still, the film is like many other Iraq and
post-September 11th films, in that it does not seem to have much
perspective on its subject.
Bottom Line: Redacted is a bold film and it
is certainly a unique attempt to distill the Iraq War into a single narrative.
The Apocalypse
Now or Platoon of this war is yet to be made but for now Redacted stands as one of the
defining pictures about Iraq War.