Redacted (2007)

Director:

Brian De Palma

Writer:

Brian De Palma (written by)

Release Date:

16 November 2007 (Spain)

Genre:

Crime | Drama | War

Tagline:

Truth is the first casualty of war.

Plot:

A montage of stories about U.S. soldiers fighting in the Iraq conflict, focusing on the modern forms of media covering the war.

Plot Keywords:

Talk To Camera | Iraq War | Profanity | Scandal | Rebel Flag

Awards:

2 wins & 2 nominations

Cast

Sahar Alloul	...	Arab News Reporter
Happy Anderson	...	Battalion Commander (as Eric 'Happy' Anderson)
Lara Atalla	...	Buddy #3
Karima Attayeh	...	Farah's Mother
Francois Caillaud	...	Buddy #2
Patrick Carroll	...	Reno Flake
Andrew Cullen	...	Buddy #1
Rob Devaney	...	Lawyer McCoy
Izzy Diaz	...	Angel Salazar
Mike Figueroa	...	Sergeant Jim Vazques
Qazi Freihat	...	Hadi
Shatha Haddad	...	Embedded Journalist
Paul Hijazin	...	English Newscaster
Suhail Abdel Hussein	...	Farah's Father
Ty Jones	...	Master Sergeant Sweet
Dhiaa Kahlil	...	Soldier
Hiyam Abdel Karim	...	Pregnant Woman
Yanal Kassay	...	Soldier
Ohad Knoller	...	Army Psychiatrist
Shukraya Maran	...	Young Screaming Woman
Sabrine Munther	...	Farah's Little Sister
Paul O'Brien	...	Barton's Father
Adel Odai	...	Interpreter
Kel O'Neill	...	Private Gabe Blix
Hameed Sahi	...	Farah's Grandfather
Abigail Savage	...	Tattooed Kid
Nick Seeley	...	Criminal Investigation Agent #1
Issam Shamary	...	Pregnant Woman's Brother
Daniel Stewart Sherman	...	B.B. Rush
Julie Thiery	...	'Barrage' Narrator
Helen Zamel	...	Date Girl
Jafar Zoubi	...	ATV Anchorman
Mazen Zoubi	...	Company Commander
Zahra Zubaidi	...	Farah

MPAA:

Rated R for strong disturbing violent content including a rape, pervasive language and some sexual references/images.

Runtime:

90 min

Country:

USA | Canada

Language:

English | French | Arabic | German

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

USA:R | Canada:18A (Alberta/British Columbia/Manitoba/Ontario) | Portugal:M/16 | Ireland:16

Filming Locations:

Jordan

Company:

Film Farm, The

Trivia:

Financed by Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: Angel Salazar's video camera, as shown in the opening scene, is a small, cheap camcorder. However, during the scene where Master Sergeant Sweet is introduced, the camera's shadow suggests a much larger high-end HD camera with wide lens and external microphone is being used.

Movie Connections:

References Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Impact is extremely powerful

Brian de Palma's Redacted ups the ante of protest films, fictionally recounting the rape and murder of a 14-year old Iraqi girl by U.S. soldiers in 2006. Using hand-held camera surveillance footage, Internet videos, excerpts from a French documentary and an Arab TV channel, Islamic fundamentalist websites, and the fictional camcorder diary of a young U.S. private, Redacted lets us know not only about the atrocities of war but about the unreliability of the way in which information is presented in the media and how we cannot trust what we see, even in his film.

Modeled after de Palma's earlier Casualties of War, Redacted searches for a truth in fiction that is deeper than reality-based documentary. Angel Salazar (Izzy Diaz) carries a video camera around shooting whatever he sees hoping to make a documentary that will be his ticket to film school. We are first introduced to his unit: Gabe Blix (Kel O'Neil), Lawyer McCoy (Rob Devaney), Sergeant Jim Sweet (Ty Jones) and good ol' boys, Reno Flake (Patrick Carroll) and B.B. Rush (Daniel Stewart Sherman). The videos make it apparent that our soldiers have lost their sense of purpose and are no longer on solid emotional ground.

The hand held video camera is then replaced by a French documentary about the soldier's routine at checkpoints in Samarra. Suddenly, a speeding car is approaching. Interpreting the signals by U.S. personnel to slow down as meaning they are being waved on through, the car is gunned down, killing a pregnant woman and her unborn child as the driver After a member of Salazar's unit is killed by a bomb, the two men who fired on the speeding car, Rush and Flake, invade the home of an Iraqi family in retribution and to enjoy the "spoils of war". In the middle of the night, they rape and murder a fourteen-year old girl, kill her family, and set the house on fire.

The sensitive Blix does not want to be involved with the mission, and McCoy goes along to try and prevent more harm but fails to stop the violence. Flake and Rush tell the rest of the company that any word of this incident will result in their death. The incident is seen only with a flickering light and the actual assault takes place off camera, but the scene nonetheless elicits a feeling of disgust. As if to try and show that the horrors of war are not limited to one side, de Palma shows the abduction and beheading of a U.S. soldier in very graphic terms. In the final gut wrenching sequence, a montage labeled "Collateral Damage" brings truth and fiction together as we see actual footage of Iraqi war victims mixed with staged deaths and faces that are redacted with black pens.

While Redacted is flawed by inconsistent acting and overly didactic add-ons, its impact is extremely powerful. De Palma indicts both the stupidity of the U.S. government for initiating the war, the complicity of the media in presenting us with a sanitized version of it, and a culture in which such atrocities are permitted to occur. Like the films of French director Bruno Dumont that show how meaningless violence generates more meaningless violence, the visceral impact of Redacted will stay with you for a long time. Slapping us in the face to show us how we have lost touch with the reality of war, the film is full of elemental passion, untidy, disjointed, and at times over-the-top, but in Dumont's words, it returns us "to the body, to the heart, to truth".