Review of Redacted (2007) by Rick S — 09 Feb 2009

Brian DePalma's angry Iraq war movie shares a lot with his Vietnam film, Casualties of War - both films feature the struggles of a morally strong character as they cope with an atrocity (rape and murder in both stories) committed by fellow soldiers which they failed to prevent happening.

Unlike Casualties... DePalma has decided not to structure the film in a conventional narrative way, but uses different digital media to portray the central events, including a video diary, news footage, webcam conversations, youtube clips, arty documentary footage even terrorist propaganda video.

There are inevitably shocking moments and the film captures the volatile atmosphere of fear, boredom, paranoia and frustration experienced by the troops on roadblock duty, and leads to the crimes. Unfortunately, despite the films best intentions its "media coverage" footage never feels authentic enough to convince like a good documentary would, and it doesn't consistently emotionally engage like a good fictional film.

It is certainly an interesting experiment, and good to see big names in American film tackle the important subject.