A montage of stories about U.S. soldiers fighting in the Iraq conflict, focusing on the modern forms of media covering the war.
'Redacted' (Orwellian euphemism for censored) is a sickeningly powerful narrative reconstruction of an American war crime in Samara, Iraq. 26th June 2006: U.S. paedophile troops raped and murdered a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, killed her mother, grandmother and brother they then burnt her corpse in an attempt to cover their tracks. The event only came to light after Iraqi resistance executed two troops from the same unit in summary reprisals, with their statements broadcast on an Arab news channel. Divided into segments like 'Tell No Lies' (soldier's reportage), 'Checkpoint' (French documentary), video blogs and 'Al-Jazeera'-esque news reports, 'Redacted' is a war film for our times; in that no other picture has come close to accurately conveying people's varied, and often desperate, search for the truth in an age of Gobellian crypto-fascism, hemispherical propaganda and open acts of state censorship. Pvt. Angel Salazar, who hopes his DV account of the war will win him a place at film school, zooms in on a scorpion being overwhelmed by an army of ants, this scene not only serves as a cinematic allusion to Sam Peckinpah's 'The Wild Bunch' but makes the same analogy as well i.e. deadly military might overcome by the force of many. Peckinpah was depicting Vietnam and the ignominious end of an American era, De Palma uses the image for Iraq and suggests that this may be one disaster too many; the kind that not only brings about the end of an era, but the irreversible moral death of an entire nation. 'Redacted' is as thematically complex a film as it is sequentially simplistic, weighed down by the sun-scorched stench of death and tragedy; disparate omens herald inevitable consequences for all involved. One soldier leafs through John O' Hara's 1934 novella 'Appointment in Samara' whose protagonist's path to self-destruction, in some ways, mirrors the occupation, a pregnant woman is shot to death at the now infamous American checkpoint, and Farah, the young girl in question, is surreptitiously molested on the same site by those who would later end her life: crime upon crime, indignity upon indignity building up to a point when we finally appreciate the significance and rhythm of Verdi's deafening soundtrack. The French documentary entitled 'Barrage' ('Checkpoint'), though intended to depict the monotonous daily routine of an occupation foot soldier, seems to harbour an air of detached relief in that France, having instigated numerous failed acts of imperial folly in Algeria, Vietnam & Indo-China, stayed out of this one. Its also a historical jibe at the French habit of constructing barricades & checkpoints, which they did with superhuman efficiency and speed in all of the aforementioned countries, and at home during the anti-colonial riots in 1968 and 2005. We also get an insight into the Nazification or Zionisation of U.S. forces on the ground: for since most of the prominent neo-cons who planned this war are Zionists; with an ulterior allegiance to either Israeli expansionism in the Middle East (i.e. Eretz Israel from Jordan to Galilee which, incidentally, is the colonial ambition depicted on their flag with those blue rectangles representing the aforementioned rivers) or inane apocalyptic desires to bring about the end of the world through Rapture; 'Redacted' inhabits that void between reason & madness. Moving from medium to medium, De Palma improves upon certain aspects from his equally powerful 'Casualties Of War' (1989) in which a platoon of U.S. troops kidnap, rape and murder a young Vietnamese girl; one of the main differences is that this company has no Erickson (Michael J. Fox) and hence no voice of reason or outrage. The handful of soldier's we're led to believe are better than their comrades, simply fall away; all their talk of professionalism and duty become impotent gestures of mealy mouthed defiance or regret in the face of brute force and evil. 'Redacted' cleverly subverts expectation in the way that one soldier initially set up an average Joe or, in a more traditional war movie, may even have been cast as the hero; is cowered into reluctant participation by the thuggish threats of an obese pederast and his vile accomplice; two character archetypes usually consigned to treacherous buffoon or henchmen roles. The real horror lies not just in the henious crime itself, but the collective betrayal of human decency by those who stood by and let it happen, for as Pvt. Salazar states: "Just because you're watching it, doesn"t mean you're not a part of it...they just watch and they do nothing". And that's the message at the heart of this picture: how modern technology has hindered the positive mobilisation of society, as much as it's helped us to stay informed about events hidden by corporate media collaborators. For if 'Redacted' prompts you to seek out documentaries like '9/11: The Road To Tyranny', 'Fabled Enemies', 'Truth Rising', 'Terror Storm', 'War Feels Like War', 'Standard Operating Procedure', 'Out Of Star', 'Taxi To The Dark Side' and others, then De Palma, in spite of having his film suppressed by the powers that be, can consider his work a success, and if all it does is remind us that this war as an affront to shared values of human decency, than that too, counts as a moral victory of sorts. And though the pictures of Iraqi casualties on De Palma's 'Collateral Damage' reel were 'redacted' by distributors for legal reasons, arguably the ultimate irony in a film about censorship, that montage still impacts with great force, but if & when De Palma wins his case to present them in their original form, it would emphasise his point that this catalogue of human suffering, when seen as it is, ought to be enough of a catalyst for immediate action & focused indignation from the American people. And if its not, well then some may recall Aristotle, whose famous maxim correlates with this film's penultimate scene in its exasperated desertion of hope for humanity: "Wretched, ephemeral race, children of chance and tribulation, why do you force me to tell you the very thing which it would be most profitable for you not to hear? The very best thing is utterly beyond your reach: not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing. However, the second best thing for you is: to die soon". A powerful, innovative and highly unsettling picture, 'Redacted' is a film you don't want to watch, but simply can't afford to miss.
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Please note this is a region 2 DVD and will require a region 2 (Europe) or region Free DVD Player in order to play. From the director of Scarface and The Untouchable comes Redacted - a fictional story inspired by true events! Redacted is a unique cinematic experience that will force viewers to radically reconsider the filters through which we see and accept events in our world, the power of the mediated image and how presentation and composition influence our ideas and beliefs. Centered around a small group of American soldiers stationed at a checkpoint in Iraq, Redacted alternates points of view, balancing the experiences of these young men under duress and members of the media with those of the local Iraqi people, illuminating how each have been deeply affected by the current conflict and their encounters with each other.
Director Brian De Palma revisits similar terrain that he covered in his 1989 film, 'Casualties of War', in this 'fictional documentary' loosely based on a real-life gang rape and multiple murder perpetrated by US soldiers in Iraq in 2006. Centred around a small army group stationed at a checkpoint in Iraq, the film alternates points of view, balancing the experiences of these inexperienced young men with those of the western media and local Iraqi people. Utilising an array of different filmic styles, from video diaries and surveillance footage, to produced documentaries and news coverage, De Palma forces the viewer to question how 'truth' is reported and asks difficult questions about the brutalising effects of war on all those involved.
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