Review of Redacted (2007) by Andrew S — 18 Jun 2009

The first casualty of war is the truth, or so the trailers and the posters for Brian De Palma's controversial Iraq War drama, Redacted, claims.

I would have to say that, after watching the film in question, the first casualty of war is not the truth. It is art. This movie generated some heat after it screened at several international film festivals, a great deal of controversy and a sizable amount of debate.

Redacted is a narrative created from several video sources; a soldiers video diary, a French documentary on the war, news footage, security cameras and streaming video from internet blogs, an Al Jazeera-esque website of insurgent activity or web chats. These video sources connect together to depict the events leading up to and following a group of American soldiers breaking into an Iraqi families home, raping a 15 year old girl and then slaughtering the entire household.

The subject matter is understandably hard hitting. If you have been buried neck-deep in a pit in a jungle for most of your life and never seen a movie about the Vietnam War, particularly the overwrought Casualties of War, also by Brian De Palma which is basically the exact same film only told with a coherent narrative, conventional filming techniques and shares the exact same number of credible performances as Redacted, so that would be none at all.

The politics behind the movie are going to ignite a fire in people on both sides of this debate for whoever sits through it, and it is the divisive political nature of this film that is one of the major contributing factors behinds almost every positive and negative critique I have seen for this film. It seems that the message now outweighs the means of delivery. That is wrong. A message, for all its good intentions, is irrelevant if the delivery of that message is flawed, and this film is beyond flawed. It is poor. It is bad.

The acting is embarrassing, nobody in the entire cast acts or reacts naturally, like a real person would under these circumstances. They behave like people who are acting as if they are a real person. You will see better acting in your local theaters am-dram society. Stiff, unnatural acting is unforgivable in a movie that aims to project stone cold, ugly reality on screen. To produce acting of such poor quality instantly discredits the intent of the film.

The writing across the board is filled with cringe inducing dialogue and with an obvious political agenda flowing through its veins. A political agenda with nothing new to say on either how war affects the men who fight it, or also on how the media reports on the war.

A movie of this nature will not change anyone's minds, all it will do is reaffirm your beliefs. Beliefs that did not need reaffirming in the first place. It feels irresponsible to tell stories such as this, the movies depicting the atrocities of Vietnam were made after the war had ended, and at this point is there anybody in the world that is not aware of the terrible things that occur during war? Redacted is doing nothing more than the beating of a dead horse filmed on a digital camcorder.

Go into the movie awaiting to have your hatred of the war and your disgust at the atrocities of that war confirmed and you will find yourself satisfied. Go into the movie believing that the liberal bias of Hollywood is betraying the troops and tarring the men and women who lay down their lives for their country and you will find yourself vindicated and infuriated. Go into the movie avoiding the politically charged nature of the movie, and you will find a bad movie. Poor acting, a terrible script and low rent photography. Cheap shock tactics do not make a good movie, they make a cheap movie too weak to stand on it's own two legs. There are cable TV dramas that look more polished than this, and there are a lot of documentaries out there that also look more polished than this. A movie that is neither shocking, interesting nor profound. A movie that fails to achieve everything it sets out to and squanders an innovative narrative style.

Redacted was one of the worst films I had seen in 2007 and may well be one of the worst movies I have ever seen. The furious right-wing detractors who decry that Brian De Palma is betraying America with this film are almost half right; Brian De Palma is actually betraying cinema. Then again, should this be a surprise from the man who gave us The Black Dahlia? Where did the real De Palma go? Can he go back to cribbing from Hitchcock and produce something good again? Here's to hoping.