"Redacted" (2007) - Movie Review

“Redacted” may be a film which really does not want us to see it again. Many had a consumption of a vague idea of the horrors happening in the midst of a war but amongst the angst and patience being burnt out in a dry land of death surrounding them, a soldier has the wary situation of everybody holding a ticket to death. The group of US soldiers in “Redacted” has been psychologically injured and become non-reactive walking heads and if that is troubled, there are seriously sick young men taking a just in their sociopath acts of rape and killing.

Brian De Palma’s film shows what the war would call the “collateral damages”. It is filmed as a series of compilation from multiple sources on the part of Samarra in Iraq. It is based upon a true incident with fictionalized characters (Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi is the 14 year old Iraqi girl was the victim the film is based upon.) and can be counted their behaviour as the psychological imbalance of a soldier out there. It states the deadlock situation in the war with consistent guarding of a check point constantly wary of insurgents as they put it.

Most of the US soldiers do not speak or understand Arabic and a narration from an Iraqi lady informs that half the Iraqis are illiterate, meaning the signs and boards asking to slow down and stop the car through the checkpoint are futile for half the people. The soldiers wait daily looking at the kids playing soccer, seeing the routine they are missing in their life. What they also see is that the routine can be a transformation or a plan to attack them anytime. The suspicion, frustration and the passive agitation in due time becomes the seed to monster some one they are not.

But not all the soldiers lose their senses. There is the soldier Lawyer McCoy (Rob Devaney) who gets threatened at gun point by his fellow soldier Flake (Patrick Corooll) to stay away from his and his buddy Rush’s (Daniel Stewart Sherman) business of rape and butchering of innocent Iraqi civilians. The film is essentially comprised of the video diary of soldier Angel Salazar (Izzy Diaz), a youth hoping to get a film school admission in making a film of his experiences in war.

“Redacted” is a social statement by Palma to be known of the brutalities and the effect it has caused. It does show couple of soldiers in very bad light but it is an incident to be informed about. His is not blaming President Bush for the insane and cruel act of these men but the situation they have been put into wherein it can be considerably ignored and wipe off their remorse in the name of war.

Palma does not want to make a visual spectacle of an emotionally charged swinging door on a soldier’s mind in the regular score of patriotism and duties. He wanted it to be raw and a truth simultaneously making it not blurry or not shaky as it would have been taken using a handy cam. It is edited with the content retrieved from a handy cam with clear picture along with security camera styled footages and internet video postings. It has given the feeling of documented truth it portrays.

Amongst one conversation with a friend, the discussion of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings popped up. He said that it was war and what can one expect and it would have been US if it was not Japan. Preemptive striking has turned everything into an air of suspicion into direct hell hole. How the concept has creep into our systems of ignoring or taken for granted on the human lives is too confronting to even think about. The ancient history of open war strategy has migrated into clandestine and deceptive method of attack has screwed up the minds. Not that the old wars did not have those but the game of waiting and the boring frustrating chores of the war players have grown unimaginably. It burns the senses of any one for such a long time devoid of simple necessities.

There is on the face statement from a woman in a video posting format about the thought of American lives been glorified more than the others. Palma’s film faced obvious controversies on the name of patriotism. And the film gives a near to truth chilling documentation of the reality out there. No one is a hero and it is a place of hatred from both the sides. And it eventually has become a tense zone not for the purpose they have been to. With guns surrounded and communication barely happening with heat, irritation and frustration, it is just a matter of time either side goes through the regularity to avenge on each other. This is the side of US which would never get a wide public picture. Palma has given it.