Redacted

Redacted

Directed by Brian De Palma (R)

A fictionalized documentary probes the murder of an Iraqi girl and her family.

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Redacted possesses “intensity and a seriousness of purpose” but tells us nothing new, said Desson Thomson in The Washington Post. Director Brian De Palma’s fictionalized documentary about the Iraq war explores the real rape and murder of an Iraqi girl and the killing of her family by American soldiers last year. It too often resembles war films of the past, however, particularly the director’s own 1989 Casualties of War, about atrocities in Vietnam. This is the same old De Palma, “enjoying the peeping, bringing us into the guilt zone, then saying shame on all of us.” At least this time he didn’t wait years to “pull his catch-all metaphor from the dark cupboard of his psyche,” said Christopher Orr in The New Republic Online. “Exploitative and politically simple-minded,” Redacted is not so much a film as a collage of found video from cell phones, Web sites, and consumer-grade camcorders. De Palma seems to think this stylistic device excuses him from “such cinematic obligations as narrative continuity, character development, and aesthetic vision.” He tries hard to shock and awe audiences, but “De Palma is now too inept even to offend.” The failure is not his alone, said A.O. Scott in The New York Times. Believing that the truth about Iraq has been “edited and obscured,” De Palma tries to “fill the gaps of our understanding” when we already have more than enough information. We’re just too morally and politically immobilized to do anything about it.