Review of Redacted (2007) by Richard H — 18 Apr 2011

Many of Brian De Palma's movies tell the same story over and over again: they are centered on a good man's inability to save a woman from an evil man. Take.

Obsession, Blow Out, Body Double, Mission: Impossible or The Black Dahlia. "Redacted" does it again. In fact,.

It looks like a remake of De Palma's own "Casualties of War". Only the war and the filming technique differ:

While "Casualties of War" was about a rape committed by American soldiers during the Vietnam War and was shot.

In De Palma's brilliant, operatic style, "Redacted" is about a rape committed by American soldiers during the war in Iraq, and consists in a collage of video documents that have been "redacted", i.e. censored, by.

The U.S. government.

It must have required a lot of self-discipline on De Palma's part to shoot this mockumentary, but to the trained eye, this patchwork of falsely amateurish films.

Evinces the same kind of visual brilliance as his more impressive-looking works. Deprived of the cinematic language he has mastered like no other, De Palma.

Focuses on directing his actors and getting from them a performance that does not look like a performance but.

Like a real slice of life that perfectly captures the banality of evil.

The film is full of very strong language and has a few rather violent scenes (like a soldier being blown to bits by a mine, or the rape scene itself) but it did not hit me to the stomach like some of De Palma's.

Earlier works. Maybe it is just me getting jaded, or maybe De Palma himself is realising that there is something wrong in inflicting P.T.S.D. on his audience, the way war does to his more likable characters.

"Redacted" is an interesting film, whose form shows the impact that the recent technology revolution has on the.

Cinematic language, just as "Cloverfield" and "Diary of the Dead" did before it.