Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a long time AICNer Winslow Leach who was moved to review Brian De Palma's REDACTED after reading a review I posted yesterday. Mr. Leach didn't like the flick very much and wanted to offer a counterpoint to Tal's glowing review. Of course, I want to side with Tal because I love Brian De Palma and want to see him return to form, but Winslow's words sound just as honest as Tal's, so the only thing that I'm sure of is that REDACTED is a divisive movie. I hope I fall on the side of loving it.
Quint, Long time fan, first time submitter. I saw you published a review of Brian De Palma's newest flick Redacted by a cat named Tal. I couldn't resist providing a counter-point. I saw the film at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this year, and though I should have written this review then, I decided not to. Why? I guess because I like De Palma, and I didn't have to heart to tear his new movie to pieces. I love Sisters, Phantom of the Paradise, and Dressed to Kill. I think Blow Out is a masterpiece. Mission: Impossible is one of the greatest spy movies of this century. Everybody can turn their nose up and scoff if they want (how can they not, Tom Cruise is in it!) but if you go back and watch Mission: Impossible again you'll see it's an incredibly well-crafted thriller. Seriously, do it. It's a mainstream blockbuster, yeah, but it's honest-to-goodness great. Carrie and Scarface are Important And Iconic American Films. Nobody can deny that. De Palma, I believe, is a genius. And then along comes Redacted, a very "important" film. How can a film based on the real-life events of American soldiers raping and killing a 14 year-old girl not be important? De Palma is trying to show us something here. In the Q+A after the film an inquizitive audience member asked, "Why make this film? Why now?" De Palma's response was, "Because if we're going to stop this war, people need to see the images." He went on the elaborate that if the populace is going to rise up against the Iraq War the way they rose up against the Vietnam War they are going to have to see the horrific images. That's what this film intends to do, show us all the "images." Does it succeed? Yeah, it shows some brutal stuff, but most brutal is the stiff, painful editing and the laugh-out-loud terrible performances. If anybody has seen De Palma's other "War Is Bad" movie Casualties Of War (Michael J. Fox and Sean Penn, natch) then you've already seen this story. Tal's review described the film as "well rehearsed, well acted and well scripted." He couldn't be more wrong. De Palma admitted that there was little-to-no scripting, and the actors were given free reign to do what they want. Believe me, it shows. You know when an actor begins to improvise and gets stuck, so they just keep repeating the same line again and again and again - because they can't think of any other place to go? That's about 30% of this movie. The character dynamic is just so forced. Why does nobody stand up against the proposed rape? Why do two of the soldiers, who are completely, morally AGAINST the crime, end up going on the trip to "do the deed"? Supposedly because they are going to "keep anything bad from happening," but when push comes to shove they don't act at all. They just gesture dramatically and cry to each other. It's all so forced, so over-the-top, so nonsensical that it just is beyond belief. The rape scene is pure schlock - just fifteen minutes of screaming - nothing compared to the profoundly disturbing (and intelligently conceived) rape scene in Irreversible from a few years back. To say that this film is "ahead of Thin Red Line" is just ignorant. Thin Red Line is a hugely important moritorium on war and the damage it does to our soul, as a people. Redacted WANTS to be that, but never, ever comes anywhere close to being anything more than a half-baked idea. The main problem is that it never gives us a reason to suspend our disbelief. You'll never buy into it because you'll spend the whole time rolling your eyes at the cheese-ball performances or the laborious pacing or the terrible attempts at "real" camera angles. Why does the security camera footage have the same definition as the documentary footage? And the YouTube footage? Tal compared it to The Blair Witch Project, but the reason Blair Witch worked is because it actually LOOKED like a handheld camera. Redacted never actually looks like anything other than HD footage. The film's got some good moments; there's a well-staged assassination sequence innvolving the soldiers sweeping enemy territory, a cool opening credit sequence, and an ironic "let's give this hero a round of applause" moment at the film's end. Also, the closing montage of gruesome images from Iraq is very shocking and effective, but it feels tagged on. The movie doesn't do the montage justice. Believe me, I want De Palma to be "back" as much as the next guy, but he's not. At this rate it looks like he'll never be back. You guys can scoff all you like, but when the movie comes out you'll see. If you use this call me Winslow Leach.
