Cool News
Winslow Leach sends in a different opinion on De Palma's REDACTED!
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.
-
+ Expand All
-
On a pinky liberal talkback!
-
To yesterday's gushing review.
-
Not just some dumbass shouting factually incorrect polemic horseshit because the movie doesn't shoot straight down the middle of a very polarizing political debate, which would be an asinine thing for any artist to do. See cons, this is how you bitch about a movie. Take notes. He plots out good points using examples from the film that seem totally in line with what I have heard about it without once trashing it because it dares to have *gasp* a point of view. Imagine, an artist creating something with a point of view at a time when absolutely NOTHING is wrong with our country. Nope nothing at all.....hey look at that unicorn!
-
I liked that, however i won't be rushing into this one.
-
I had the exact same reaction. Plus, as I said in the talkback yesterday, if you want to make a powerful statement and show images from the Iraq War, have the balls to go over there and make a documentary. Like the vastly superior Gunner Palace. Or Heavy Metal In Baghdad. Rounding up a group of community theater actors and playing army doesn't do a damn thing for me.
-
I heard it helps with weight loss.
-
Is the movie EPIC?
-
Whoops.
-
That was genius. I have a tea spattered keyboard now
-
http://tinyurl.com/24xehs
http://tinyurl.com/2hnn5r -
With lurking cases of wafers and blue powdery sparking motor units.
-
Seeing as he lost control of the film and didn't get the final edit. As it is, you can tell that multiple people took stabs at editing the poorly-constructed mess that the film became.MI:3 is the only one of the series that 1) actually followed the show's premise and 2) was a credible spy film. Sorry, Winslow, but you're just wrong about MISSION IMPOSSIBLE. Which leaves a very good chance that you're dead wrong about REDACTED as well.
-
The high point in DePalma's long, long, long career was "Phantom of the Paradise."
It's true. -
"We love Americans who hate America as we do," Said Ayman Al-Zawahriri, OBL's Joseph Goebbles. "The funny thing that these infidels who make these films don't understand, they would be the first to be killed in Allah's new order. However, their propaganda check is in the mail nonetheless."
-
GarabageMan33 and Winslow Leach are right, the movie isn't even close to being good. On a positive note, of the 42 movies I saw in Toronto, there were 8 films I disliked more than Redacted.
-
"We love anything that shows the zionist, imperialist infidels as they truly are," Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, planner of the 9-11 attacks said. "As a member of moveon.org, media matters, and a registered Democrat, it is good to see the Bush administration exposed for what they are."
-
i thought was totally bogus and contrived...any woman would be fighting and running and screaming for her life (it was kind of a small knife too wasnt it? not even a gun!) she just sort of "rolled over" (pun intended). I didnt buy it at all. I worked on REDACTED in post and what i've seen seems really amaturish...the HD image seems way to clean for it to feel like home video footage.
-
This was actually a kind review compared to what he could said, but on point. Though the Goebbels-esque "control the masses with images" part was new to me. I'm sure De Palma thinks it's ok to make such a poor film for "the cause" (his own aggrandizement) but a poor film is a poor film no matter what it's about. I have to disagree with comparisons to Casualties of War because that cast that could act! Either way, Redacted is a horrible film no matter how much you hate the Iraq war you will not be inspired or even mildly entertained.
-
in getting all of us imperialists out of Iraq, will his next movie be about the resulting genocide and ethnic cleansing?
-
Seriously. How come we're not seeing any films about the enemy? My guess is they lost their balls after seeing what happened to Theo Van Gogh. Alas, TRUE LIES will be the last great film with Muslim extremists as the bad guys. US soldiers are now the bad guys instead. Pathetic.
-
...Is already well under way, thanks to American intervention. It's only stupidity or, if you believe the conspiracy folks, greed keeping them in the quagmire now. It would be best if they just take it on the chin like a man and leave now before they fuck even more stuff up. Let em divy the country up and rename chunks of it and print up some new flags, open a few concentration camps, have a couple of years of small scale genocidal conflict while the U.N stands around and plays frisbee with economic sanctions and then, after everyone is pretty much dead or too tired to kill, send in NATO to clean it up and ship a few token naughty men off to the Hauge. Then we can open up the borders for some sex slave trade.
Oh, as far as the film goes? Depalma can be hit or miss. Honestly, this sounds kind of miss. Even Casualties Of War felt a little too slickly produced and entertainment geared for its subject matter. Plus, if your going to use real footage, especially horrific footage, you really have to earn it. Otherwise you both overshadow your film and devalue the images. -
Read my reaction to your inane post in the other talkback. You know, the one where you posted the exact same thing. Were you really that proud of it?
-
I posted (nearly) the exact same thing because I didn't feel like trying to explain it twice. Not that it would've mattered for some of you softies.
-
It's funny cause it's true.
-
LOL. Thank you, DailyKos.
-
Black Dahlia.
-
Alright, now I HAVE to watch this movie again.
The manner in which the film portrays war is compelling enough reason for me to endorse it. I just haven't seen it before. And I'll admit I'm a sucker for artifice.
Good review. Thanks. -
to be whispered in the same breath with other classics like "i spit on your grave" and "death proof"
-
You Americans haven't done anything wrong in Iraq, no siree. Those civilians just 'got in the way of our bullets'. It's propaganda. I'm not listening. Tra la la la la, not listening whooop whoop... sorry can't hear you. What's that? No sorry, can't hear you over the noise of my own blinkered prejudice that we're always right and we never do anything wrong and if we do something wrong we never take the blame but then that won't happen cause we're always right and whiter than white with god on our side so sorry, not listening. Everything's just peachy here. Economys all shot to hell, people are getting turfed out of their homes thanks to sub prime screwing everyone, New Orleans still underwater but hey it's all okay. Honest, it is. I'm waving, I know it looks like I'm drowning but from so far way you can't tell. Wibble.
Readers Talkback
User Login
Top Talkbacks
- Whitney Houston 1963 - 2012 -- 383 total posts 380 posts
- New JUDGE DREDD post production footage pops up -- 111 total posts 111 posts
- WTF HOLLYWOOD: SOLARBABIES -- 75 total posts 73 posts
- HANNA's Saoirse Ronan to boss around seven little people -- 71 total posts 68 posts
- Does ‘SNL’ Rhyme With ‘Deschanel’?? Learn Which SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE Vet Hosts After Sexy Zooey!! -- 77 total posts 55 posts
- If the Behind the Scenes Pics of the Day drops her pen, pick it up, but don’t look at her legs or else it will be on your record. -- 54 total posts 48 posts
- There's a STAR TREK video game that is going to lead into JJ's STAR TREK 2 apparently... -- 165 total posts 41 posts
- Herc’s Seen Tonight’s Return Of THE WALKING DEAD!! Discuss Also DOWNTON ABBEY, FEAR FACTOR, PAN AM, ONCE, SIMPSONS, DYNAMITE, LUCK, SHAMELESS, BAIT CAR, THE GRAMMYS And More!! Sunday Is Sweeps Day 11!! -- 41 total posts 41 posts
- To Commemorate The 3D Release Of STAR WARS EPISODE I: THE PHANTOM MENACE, George Lucas Wants You To Know...Greedo Shoots First!! -- 500 total posts 35 posts
- Avid Comic Reader Hercules Does Battle With Tedium During Kevin Smith’s COMIC BOOK MEN! -- 28 total posts 28 posts