Watching Redacted is a brutal, poorly acted and sometimes unforgivable experience. It is also almost mandatory, this incendiary look at the way truth is filtered through varying lenses in the middle of warfare a startlingly grotesque shock to the system. And while many of its ideas and thoughts and concerns aren’t exactly new, writer and director Brian De Palma has presented them in such a way that no matter how hard you might try taking your eyes off of the screen is virtually impossible. 

Controversial Writer/Director Brian DePalma on the set of Magnolia Pictures' Redacted

Not to say I feel even remotely comfortable saying any of this. The film’s look at a platoon of Army soldiers stationed at a checkpoint in the middle of the Iraq at times borders on becoming propaganda for the very terrorists and insurgents we’re supposed to be fighting. There are scenes here so unquestionably nascent, ideas and concepts so unbelievably simplistic in their moral reasoning it quickly becomes clear De Palma has no interest in painting an evenhanded picture.

And yet, a large part of me says so what and buys into what it is the sometimes visionary and almost always controversial filmmaker is selling. To “redact” is to edit or revise, and when we say something has been “redacted” it usually means information of one kind or another has been removed. In the case of the war in Iraq, many would go another step further and say this information has been censored. Considering this is a conflict our current administration led us into using faulty and unsubstantiated information it’s pretty hard to disagree with the reasoning.

What De Palma does here, then, is to take this censoring of the truth and twist it into the exact opposite direction. His picture is the extreme of everything that is wrong about the way, the anti-heroic view of our soldiers and the job they are doing in Iraq. Every bad thing they might do, every evil element worming its way into their hearts, every nasty thought surfacing due to the extreme horrific hardships our government is asking them to suffer through is on display, the director worming his camera as deep into the jugular as he can to unleash stories you just won’t see on NBC, CBS, ABC or Fox News.

Sometimes this works, other times it does not, but for every moment that forces viewers to uncomfortably ponder this mission in the desert along comes another blasting them with such visceral nihilism the ultimate effect of it all is almost desensitizing. It is almost as if De Palma is trying to dehumanize his audience just as much as he is trying to do the same to his young cadre of soldiers in the film, and by the time the picture finally came to an end in a montage of actual heart-stopping photos of the war’s civilian casualties I’d been so bludgeoned by it all I almost couldn’t take it.

All this said, I think people should see this movie. While it will not change anyone’s mind on the war (those against it will only come out feeling more so, those on the opposite spectrum holding just as dear to their convictions as well) it does force them to ponder the true cost of what it is we are asking these young men and women to fight and die for. More, it shows how the truth can be spun, warped, twisted and ultimately blacked out into oblivion, and when the clear light of history shines on this era I find it hard to believe little of the Iraq story will be regarded as anything close to America’s finest hour. 

So hate Redacted. Spew venom and vitriol at it. Call it names and hold its creator De Palma on a pedestal as an object of un-American derision. But just remember, you can do this because you are free, and the only way to remain that way is to learn and to know the sometimes cruelly hellish and deplorably awful truth. If you can keep that in mind, then maybe freedom isn’t as lost as the director might believe, and our future both here and in the world might not be as bleak as so many of us everywhere might have feared.

Film Rating: êê1/2  (out of 4)

Additional Links:

-  Redacted Theatrical Trailer