Film Reviews

Redacted

• Rating:
• Director: Brian De Palma
• Starring: Daniel Stewart Sherman
• Details: US / Canada / 82mins (16).

Brian De Palma is the most consistently inconsistent filmmaker today. For every Scarface, there's a Bonfire Of The Vanities; for every Untouchables, there's a Black Dahlia; for every.. you get the point. Written and directed by De Palma, Redacted falls into the latter category, again. In fact, so many of his films can be lobbed into the 'if only' box, that his mantle of a brilliant filmmaker must be re-evaluated. Cobbled together from a soldier's documentary, security cameras, TV news footage and YouTube posts, Redacted is a mockumentary that mockuments the series of events leading up to, during, and after the rape and murder of 15-year-old Iraqi girl and her family by American troops. Shot by Pt. Angel Salazar (Diaz), who hopes the footage will earn him a place in film school after the war, De Palma hopes to get under the skin of the grunt in the field, but his realist approach doesn't hold up. Why? The lines feel 'written' and the performances are 'acted', which, for a mockumentary, is death (if you want a good war mockumentary, check out 84 Charlie Mopic. You get can it on YouTube). Redacted has an important message and the film deserves to be made; De Palma, unfortunately, is not the man to do it. Still waiting on the definitive Iraq film, then.

Review by Gavin Burke