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8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Flawed and biased, but relevant., May 11, 2008
First, I object to the depiction of soldiers in the movie. Well, not the soldiers that are in the movie, but rather the ones offscreen. The vast majority of US soldiers are honorably doing a very dangerous job, with enemies who are constantly trying to provoke them to treat Iraqis badly. Those soldiers are NOT shown in Redacted and there is no reminder whatsoever that the psychopaths depicted are an aberration. That all said, the murders depicted did happen and there was no way to dress it up to make the US look good.
Most reviewers are focussed on the movie's primary subject - the rape and murders. This is Casualties of War v2.
To me, the more important point is made earlier on, as you watch the squad on checkpoint duty. It is a miserable position to be in, to be constantly at risk, at the hands of unseen enemies, in an alien country where you don't speak the language. The soldiers are shown to have lost most of their empathy for the Iraqis, and I am not sure you can blame them. You can't blame the non-insurgent Iraqis either, both are suffering. But what exactly is the visible difference between an insurgent and a civilian Iraqi? Darn hard to tell, from the point of view of the soldiers, that's the problem.
Re. the murders: out of 5 soldiers, 2 are psychos, 1 happily films them and the rest don't do a thing about it. Very nuanced, Mr. De Palma. The soldier who gets decapitated later is conveniently the cameraman. In the real incident in Iraq, an innocent soldier was kidnapped and decapitated, but he wasn't even in the same unit. Not a subtle difference, so why couldn't De Palma be honest about it?
So, why 3 stars? Well, 2 would be more to my taste, because of the anti-military bias. However, there have been way too many Iraqi civilian deaths, because of insufficient restraint on the use of deadly force (never mind that inter-ethnic violence kills more Iraqis, that's not what al Quaeda propaganda is going to focus on).
That seems to be changing, but movies like Redacted, despite its flaws, are a needed wakeup call nevertheless. Especially when a Vice President can condone Gestapo-era torture methods and keep his job. You can't win these wars without restraint but the troops are also constantly being put in a position where hesitation can get them killed. A very difficult problem. The price of getting it wrong? Vietnam, Chechnya, Algeria, etc...
To the troops: take care, be safe, be honorable. To Iraqis: may you find peace.
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14 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
De Palma's Worst Effort Ever (Amature Hour for De Palma), April 20, 2008
[This review refers to the version which aired on HDNet, not the DVD. Based on some comments in other reviews, the DVD appears to have been reedited and the sequence of some scenes some changed.]
It's hard to believe this is from the same person who directed "Scarface". This is "The Blair Witch Project" meets "Full Metal Jacket" meets "Loose Change". It really watches like some teenager decided to make a war movie after spending a weekend watching Vietnam flicks. Has De Palma ever met anyone in the military? Has he ever worked a set where there were ex-military advisers (like most military themed movies use)? The problems with this movie are five-fold. First, the storyline is somewhat cartoonish. Second, the characters are just copies of some of the worst war movie stereotypes. De Palma obviously based the "Rush" character on Leonard "Private Pyle" Lawrence in "Full Metal Jacket". Flake is a clone of PFC Louden Downey in "A Few Good Men", or perhaps Lennie Small from "Of Mice and Men". Third, some of the Internet scenes make me wonder if De Palma has ever been online or used a web browser. They are just odd. Four, the facility the Army members use as their bunk house has all kinds of industrial equipment, including a big, pale blue wall with gauges and levers like the engine room out of a 1950's sci-fi flying saucer. Fifth, and most importantly, the story is just bad, and really hard to believe. I don't mean the rape/murder, I mean everything else The "interrogation" scene of SPC McCoy makes no sense. First, in a legal investigation, why is an NCO interrogating someone? A JAG officer would be doing that, or in a non-legal investigation, an assigned officer would be doing it.
Literally every scene, with the exception of the very first scene, is like it was done by clueless teenagers and leaves any non-ignorant person saying to themselves "it would never happen that way". Down to the bizarre (and totally implausible) final scene, where McCoy breaks down but his buddy still demands a photo of him and his wife, and the totally weird applause for McCoy from the bar crowd.
This movie is best described as the "Plan 9 from Outer Space" of war movies. No, make that the "Showgirls" of war movies. That's a better comparison. What "Showgirls" is to "My Fair Lady", "Redacted" is to war movies.
But it is worse than that, and here is why.
Every character with any relation to the military, with the sole exception of SPC McCoy, is depicted as corrupt. Even McCoy's father does not support his son. We get the impression the senior McCoy was a career military man, either an officer or senior NCO, but he tries to get his son to not report what happened. That just does not seem believable. And he refers to what it would do to "The Corps". The Corps is the Marines, but the movie's characters were Army.
It is just so odd, I have to wonder if De Palma really wrote this film. He cannot do something that God-Awfully bad. I mean, it reminds me of a middle eastern soap opera you might see on Palestinian television, the caricatures are so, so bad. Filled with stereotypes, bad stories, and just oddness.
De Palma could have made a good movie, using the basic concepts of "Redacted", but he did not.
P.S. The movie, during "French documentary" sequence, wrongly claims Iraqi literacy is only 50%, pointing out this statistic while referring to Arabic language signs at traffic checkpoints. Iraqi literacy in 2000 was 74.1%, and for males (likely drivers in an Arabic country), it was 84.1%. You have to ask "Why" on this point. Why, in a pseudo-documentary style present incorrect information? Is it just sloppiness, or intentional?
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
DePalma's Awesome Anti-War Statement..., November 27, 2009
If you have read any of my other reviews, you'll see that I am a very huge fan of Brian DePalma's. I love every film he has ever made! But, don't let that distract from my opinion of this film. It's a film like this that makes me favor his work so much. Yes, there are some very scathing reviews of this film on here (and all over the web), but there are some really glowing one's as well; and, rightly so!
First off, this is NOT a 'war film', but an 'anti-war' film. Yes, Brian had the b*lls to make a statement declaring how awful this whole war mess in Iraq really is. And, the results are magnificent. This is possibly the most powerful piece of anti-war propaganda since Kubrick's "Paths of Glory", and/or DePalma's own "Hi, Mom!". Comparable in plot to his film "Casualties of War", DePalma used the 'raped-girl-murdered-family' theme here to symbolize the whole brutality and senselessness that is war. And, the whole 'raping of a nation' that it encompasses.
This is not just a film to make you feel proud to be an American, but to make you feel glad to celebrate the fact that there is some Human decency still left in some of us. Yes, there are criticisms about the acting in this...Wow, some people just don't have a clue! The acting in this is spot on perfect! It is not a 'Hollywood-piece-of-crap' saturated with such generic quality that makes me wanna barf. This is supposed to come across as reality, and it does!
Brian utilizes film techniques that he hasn't done since the radical days of the 1960's, when he was more of a guerrilla style filmmaker. Forget the 'Hitchcock borrower' style he so often utilizes. Yes, the film is glossy, beautiful to behold, and has magnificent cinematography, but the underlying theme is gritty and very ugly: The Truth!!! He incorporates so many techniques and styles in this, that it is pure dizzying, just like the chaotic world of the h*ll these guys are in. Using You-tube blogs, camcorders, documentary style footage, and straight out powerhouse filmmaking, DePalma has crafted possibly the best film in his entire career.
For all the 'Bill O'Reilley's' of the world, this is not a film for small minded people like you. No, this is a film for us that hate war, detest the violence and brutality and 'rape' that it induces on us, and desire to live in peace, harmony, and love between all of the nations; NOT just one. We are all under God, not just the U.S..
The final montage of photo's is so powerful, it would take a robot not to be moved by the very haunting images on the screen. And, don't even get me started on just how awesome the whole 'bar-coming-home' scene is! This is an emotionally charged film that will leave some people weeping unabashedly, and rightfully so. No shame in that!
One of my favorite scenes is of a girl posting a You-tube blog, stating just how morose and barbaric war and machosism is. Don't let small-minded Bush-loving idiotic people cloud your judgement of this film (for most of them haven't even seen it, and if they did, they just don't understand its wonderful message), for this is such a awesome piece of filmmaking that it received a 15 minute standing ovation at its Venice premiere. The Cannes festival gave it top honors as well. O'Reilley called DePalma "The Devil" (ha-ha-ha) for making this, some have even gone as far as to call him anti-American, but most intelligent critics are declaring (like I am) this to be one of the best anti-war statements in the history of film.
This is not Hollywood, baby...This is a reflection of real life!
Hope this review is helpful to whoever reads it, and hope you enjoy the film! In the meantime, let's just hope that we don't all end up getting 'redacted' on what we want to voice as our opinion, especailly when it comes to this atrocious war (Vietnam Part 2).
Thank you & Peace out! ;-)
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