Redacted (2007)

On the 12th of March 2006 five American soldiers of the 101st Airborne walked in to a house outside the village of Yusufiyah in Iraq and murdered a mother , a father and a six year old child . After this they took turns to rape the fourteen year old daughter before killing her . This crime became known The Mumudiya Killings . This shocking crime was later turned in to a compelling book by Jim Frederick entitled Black Hearts in 2010 . Three years prior to this Brian DePalma made a highly fictionalised account called REDACTED DePalma doesn't seem an obvious choice for this type of story since he has a highly idiosyncratic camera style . That said he did make CASUALTIES OF WAR which was thematically very similar to this REDACTED though be it set in Vietnam rather than Iraq . The director's cinematic style is entirely different from what we've been used to for many years . Here instead of a camera voyeuristic moving around we have a cinema verite style complete with internet clips and a cast involving unknown actors ad-libbing The unfortunate thing is that DePalma seems way out of his depth . He fails to develop the story in anyway . Reading the Frederick's book you're aware of the brutality B Company 501st Infanrty Regiment 101st Airborne Division were experiencing with a casualty rate similar to that experienced during the Second World War . Regardless of your opinion of the war ( I was against it ) it is essential reading for the often incomprehensible nature of an insurgency conflict . REDACTED fails to give anything about the background or the context of what might have led to this type of atrocity against innocent civilians . The platoon in question see one of their comrades killed but apart from that there's no real inciting incident , there's no real character motivation and that's the fundamental failing of the film The second major failing is that the actors are fairly dreadful but I should qualify this by saying it's almost certainly not their fault because their characters have the depth of rice paper . None of this is helped by having to spontaneously spout dialogue off the top of their heads . Make no mistake you can see DePalma shouting through a loudhailer" okay you're a soldier in Iraq so pretend you're in a war-zone and ... ACTION " . This type of acting style might work in British social dramas but not in a plot driven American war film and it shows This is a very sensitive , harrowing subject matter for a film and it deserves some reverence to say the least. It's almost certain if this film is to go by that DePalma was against the war in Iraq and it's perhaps not surprising that many people who have praised REDACTED are similarly against the invasion. Regardless of my own politics I can only comment on it as a movie fan and this is a fairly poor film . One can only hope that if Hollywood get round to adapting Black Hearts they can do the full story justice for the sake of fourteen year old Abeer Qasim Hamza and her family in a conflict that saw aid workers being decapitated on the internet by insurgents

Redacted never made it to the cinemas here, and I wonder why, since it's presented mostly in the first-camera perspective in pseudo-documentary style which has always been popular with the horror genre at least, and has Brian De Palma at the helm, a director whom I always associate with making stylish films, from his impressive resume such as The Untouchables right up to The Black Dahlia.With Casualties of War he had already done an anti-war film, albeit it came a little too late, some two centuries after the Vietnam War, to critique on. So it's no wonder that with the Iraqi War that's still ongoing, and with public sentiments quite bewildered against a needless war (wherefore art thou WMD?) he had come out to write and direct a film that deals directly with the atrocities of war, any war for that matter, that aims its sights squarely on how Truth is always the first casualty, because what comes out will almost always be a slew of cover ups to mask cock ups and accidents, intentional or otherwise, that will have negative impact on those currently or have been involved.There are already a fair share of films both dramatic and action based that takes up this topic (the more recent one being Paul Greengrass' Green Zone), but De Palma's film is presented in a different fashion to put us, the audience, in the driving seat witnessing events as they unfold through cameras of various shapes, sizes and placed in different situations. With first person perspectives, it's usually through a single camera with an incredible battery life, but De Palma infuses common sensibilities in his film and involves multiple camera points of view to present a congruent narrative that's loosely based on the disgraceful Mahmudiyah atrocities as committed by the US military.So we see the entire episode, and what we normally see from the daily news networks, all rolled into one tight and grippingly paced film, through the eyes of a wannabe filmmaker soldier, documentary filmmakers, press corps embedded in raids, Arab and Eurp press members on the ground and over their respective news networks, videos through insurgent websites, responses through viral videos, webcam chats, surveillance cameras and so on. It's a breathtaking number of cameras involved, each presenting something different brought to the flow of the film, and if there's one person who can pull it all off convincingly, it's De Palma of course. One can imagine how world events get told nowadays, no longer relying on a single source for information, or a handful of sources, but an entire plethora of platforms to choose from thanks to technology and social media such as Twitter and Facebook, bringing us much closer to events from a first person perspective, where the man on the ground telling his actual, real time experience can garner a world wide audience at the click of a button.It's a powerful anti-war, or anti-Iraq-war for that matter, which follows a group of grunts whom we see performing their routine, rote duties of securing checkpoints and going through the tense checks they're tasked to perform, which keep everyone on the edge since Death can come knocking at any time should they slip up. De Palma doesn't sweep a lot of things under the carpet, and tells of how shootings become indiscriminate, of how cover ups are part and parcel of military reports and investigation outcomes, of the near certain circle of violence and revenge cycles each side get into. Definitely recommended material to sit through.

Iraq calls America The Great Satan.REDACTED shows us why. Written and directed by Brian de Palma, we follow a small cadre of American troops for a few explosive havoc days of rape and murder in Samara, Iraq. Based on a real account of the rape and murder of a 15-year-old Samara girl, I researched the web for this particular incident... and ended up reading dozens of other cases.I stopped searching. Nothing unique about this movie's incident. It had become common practice with the ignorant thugs who had become the lowest swine on the planet - the Amerikan Military. (An Iraqi soldier comments that REDACTED shows one rape - while he has witnessed thousands.) ...And the Great Satan coalesces, laughing worms.American Military, like mongrels off their leashes, create more terrorism towards Iraqis than the other way 'round. And - at the risk of sounding like a broken record - one man bears the brunt of this blame. George W. Bush.Film aims so hard at being "reality TV" (by being lensed through various security cams, embedded reporter footage, hidden terrorist cams, cellphone video, online wives' videos, Arabic website footage, etc. - there are no actual "movie camera" master shots and cutaways), that the "natural" acting is anything BUT.The first action vignette is beautifully staged, as soldiers fight to keep their eyes open at a dull checkpoint, while Handel's Sarabande in D minor lulls us into a false sense of quietude. De Palma plays this scene like a French documentary, showing us the complications at just this one checkpoint. As the American troops describe how they've set up extensive Iraqi signage outlining checkpoint procedures, a French narrator tells us that studies show over half of Iraqis are illiterate; which means most of them cannot read the instructions and have no idea of checkpoint protocol at the Terrorist Amerikan Checkpoints.After nothing happening all day, all hell breaks loose when a car doesn't stop at its prescribed point. A pregnant woman is killed, and we see the massacre through the eyes of a non-American news report.Removing us from provincial American reportage enables us to perceive the incident with clearer vision; then de Palma drops us back into the ignorant provincialism of the American grunt camp; utterly remorseless and flippant, they refuse to comprehend how other cultures might misinterpret their hand signals or speech, blaming the driver for the massacre.Many would argue that these men are not representative of American soldiers. But if SOME soldiers are like this, it means those "some" are representing America. REDACTED raises the horrifying reality that these "some" are not the exception - they are the rule. We would know this if the information dribble from war zones was not being "redacted" by the duplicitous government (whole pages, lines and incriminating evidence obscured or removed from reports before being released to the public). Like "Rendition" or "Enhanced Interrogation," Redacted is merely another Great Amerikan Euphemism.The swinish Bushies will protest, "It's only a movie!" But even if we negate the atrocities these soldiers perpetrate, the checkpoints in that foreign land are a reality - CAUSING more violence and death than they curb (which Bush and his cabbagehead general, Petraeus, and puppetfool Bremer, refuse to acknowledge). "Over a 24-month period, U.S. troops killed 2,000 Iraqis at checkpoints. 60 were confirmed insurgents. No U.S. soldiers were charged in any of these incidents."The stars of REDACTED are all unknowns, so when the hard bigotry comes, we accept it: "nuke 'em all... scorched earth... ragheads... dwarf Ali Babas..." every insult you've ever heard is compacted into this movie.The Amerikan Military and Propaganda Government have dehumanized the Iraqis so morbidly that American grunts feel entitled to these objects as "spoils of war"; premeditating and performing the rape and murder of the 15-year-old girl was just another rowdy frat night for the rapists, even though some of the troop protested - but not enough to actually STOP the incident.Grunts have been indoctrinated to believe they are performing a FAVOR for Iraq by "overthrowing Saddam, bringing democracy to them - and not even a thank you!" Yet the fact that their Christian feet are on Islamic soil only increases the hostility - an Arab religious tenet is to keep non-Islamic feet off their "holy" land. but George W. Bush will never "get" it.As revenge for the 15-year-old girl, a soldier is kidnapped and beheaded by Iraqis. But now de Palma shows us the American version of this news, and we see exactly how deluded and in denial the American government keeps itself, as a military spokesman talks of the "barbaric and brutal nature of the terrorists and their complete disregard for human life." And though one soldier wants to bring charges against his own men, the first thing that comes into question in American courts is the sanity of the soldier bringing the charges. The frustration of this insular system of denial and protectionism will make your head swell and smoke come out your ears.Ironically, de Palma's movie ends with redactions that the movie studios made before release, in a last brutal segment called "Collateral Damage - Actual pictures from the Iraq War." We do not see every picture de Palma intended us to see. But we see enough: children with burned skin, screaming. Families holding their heads, screaming, while their child lies slaughtered on the ground; a man cradling his naked son, covered in blood; splotches of blood all over a screaming child's dress; a dead woman with eyes wide open, lying in a pool of blood, her limbs removed. This last picture is apparently the Samara girl.And only one question raises its ugly, swollen weasel head: When will The Great Satan, George W. Bush, be brought to justice?

The director just shown a damn dare. The camera work is horrible. I don't like to see a movie which seems like tapped on a handy-cam. Its kinda weird to watch a movie on a fixed angle, and without any camera motion.More or less, the movie doesn't have any story. I expected it to be a high voltage fighting action movie as its poster seems like US army on a action. But... I only found few bullshit butts all around the movies.Finally how come a handicapped person became a soldier at US army at this movie? His behavior sounds so much irritating to me. My god... a sick person as a army soldier???