The most disturbing and successful release since the start of the Iraqi war. Another anti-war film that may be too good for its own good.
“Redacted” is the most disturbing film released since the beginning of America’s war in Iraq. It is also the most successful in expressing the rage of the occupied country. The film is self-described as “Visually documenting imagined events.” It is a fictionalized story based on the documented rape and mass murder committed by US infantrymen in their attack last year on an Iraqi family in Mahmudiya, a hostile Sunni Arab town south of Baghdad.
Similar to Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood” writer/director De Palma has put personalities and backgrounds to the news profiles of the three convicted infantrymen (and the one remaining to go on trial). The resulting film will be controversial, to say the least. It will be labeled as a crass attempt to capitalize on the tragedy. It will be labeled as pure speculation posing as truth. Those charges will be hard to refute but, above all, it is de Palma’s statement about the war. And it is highly likely that he speaks for many others.
The story itself is a combination of several earlier influences. The first is Deborah Scranton’s “War Tapes” in which a dozen National Guard reservists called to duty in Iraq were given digi-cams and allowed to record whatever they saw. The underlying mode of “Redacted” is that one of the men in the unit is making as film of the group’s experience in Iraq. The soldiers exhibit distrust but eventually cooperate with the film-making. After all, they are all in it together.
Eventually a real-life reporter comes on the scene and reports a completely different story. Another story is assembled by Army interrogators. The original story is redacted to suit the needs of the respective interest groups.
The film also takes a piece out of Petra Epperlein’s and Michael Tucker’s “Gunner Palace.” Soldiers living in a bombed out and rotting Baghdad luxury hotel describe their weariness with the war, months after President Bush declared victory.
The cast is a unit of American soldiers charged with manning a checkpoint in Iraq. Their job is a routine of hateful interactions with locals who do not speak English and in many cases do not read in their own language. Thus the checkpoint’s warning signs are useless and subject to being ignored---either by accident or on purpose. Make no mistake, the locals are not terrorists. But even so they are completely aware that their country is being occupied for no good reason.
Daniel Stewart Sherman plays Specialist B.B. Rush, who is tight with Reno Flake (Patrick Carroll). Reno and B.B. are from places in America from which everybody who can leave, has left. Neither joined the military to fight. Like the majority of US soldiers, they joined to escape. They have been despised their entire lives and, naively, they expected something different from the military. What they got was new hatred combined with even less respect than they received in their home towns.
Rob Devaney plays Lawyer McCoy, the man who goes with them on the night of their crime. McCoy is from a military family and so has a sense of purpose slightly above his peers. But he is helpless to stop what takes place. In the end he testifies against his former peers, the grueling torture of his conscience now accompanies the nightmares of the killing of the family.
These three are included in the home movie by the fourth soldier. As the crime takes place and the cover-up proves impossible, they take on the identities of Americans everywhere. There are those who hate the war but are forced to partake and those who oppose what is happening but are helpless to stop it.
Caught in the middle are the men, women and children who make up the collateral damage of all wars. The film is a mystery for which we know the ending but do not know the escape. A drama of life as real as any inner-city misery, all the worse for being a hell of our own making.
This is a solid R rating and will be too much to watch for most audiences, of any age.
MPAA: Rated R for strong disturbing violent content including a rape, pervasive language and some sexual references/images
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