“Redacted”- Rejected

Brian DePalma- the name calls to mind many movies that can only be described as great.  “Scarface”, “Dressed to Kill”, “Untouchables”, “Carlito’s Way”, “Body Double”, and “Carrie” are all films that every movie lover needs to see.

 

“Redacted”, written and directed by DePalma, is not one of those films.

 

A “docudrama”, “Redacted” is an obnoxious “imagining of an event as it might have happened.”  If that event were, say, the end of the world due to an asteroid strike, the “imagining” would certainly work.

 

Unfortunately, “Redacted” tells the “story” of the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl in Iraq by US marines, and the subsequent murder of her family.  Thrown in is the beheading of the soldier who filmed the event.  These events are far too important for an "imagining of an event as it might have happened."

 

But no one actually filmed the event, except Brian DePalma.  The writer/director portrays the marine corps unit as a collection of semi-retarded, racist clowns from the southern US who show an incredibly brazen disregard for the chain of command, the rules of engagement, and any reasonable course of action in the midst of a war.

 

I’m not naïve- anyone who has had a job, has hobbies or interests, or just shops for groceries knows that there are bad apples in all of life’s baskets.

  However, the liberal left’s portrayal of the military disregards one important fact:  the military is a machine.  No machine could continue to function with the sort of people portrayed in the marine unit in “Redacted”.  DePalma has to populate a single marine corps unit with all the evil people a normal person will meet over the course of their entire lifetime in order to make this “docudrama” work.

 

Of course, DePalma has high-minded reasons for making the movie.  He is trying to make some sort of McLuhan-esque “the media is the message” statement by using hand-held camcorders and helmet-cams to tell the story as the soldiers saw it.  Unfortunately, this tactic makes the soldiers look more clownish, and appear more as caricatures of soldiers than real people in a real situation.

 

I’m not ever going to say that people opposing a war should hold their tongues because US troops are in harm’s way.  That’s not what this country is about.  I’m also not going to say that terrible things happen during wartime, and that otherwise decent people won’t do terrible things when pushed beyond the limits of what they can endure.

 

DePalma doesn’t attempt to make any of these points.  "Redacted"  is a blatant, unapologetic statement of the liberal left’s hatred for the military and anyone who would serve in it.  I wonder when the rank-and-file Democrat will stop harping on talk radio and realize the true hate almost always comes from the left.