Redacted Sucks

Is there a director more hit and miss than Brian De Palma? I watched a screener of his latest Redacted this afternoon and it’s lives up to it’s reputation as a truly awful motion picture.

Redacted is based on a real event that happened in Samarra, Iraq in 2006. A fifteen year old Iraqi girl was raped and killed along with a majority of her family by a group of U.S soldiers. Redacted is not the film to tell this story. Every acting choice by the actors rings incredibly false. To show that these young men are out for blood, De Palma has them practically drooling, grabbing their crotches, and spewing racial epitaphs in every scene. These guys are beyond mongoloids. Certainly it took mongoloids to commit such an horrendous act, but I doubt they resembled the 1972 Oakland Raiders.

Brian De Palma’s use of amateur actors kills any chance for Redacted to be taken seriously. Virtually every actor in the movie delivers their lines with a jittery, stream of conscious delivery that you often see in a high school drama class doing improvisations. Also add a layer of the worst Eminem imitation you’ve ever seen.

Redacted contains more stereotypes that The Dirty Dozen. It’s as if Brian De Palma hasn’t been around another human-being in years. You have the fat, raciest redneck who camouflages himself in the stars and bars. You have the wacky Latino who speaks like Speedy Gonzalez. You have the weak, whining, bookwork liberal who stands above the fray and sees the truth… grab me barf bag so I can hurl. You have to be with these people for the whole movie! They do everything according to their stereotype. If you’re looking for any sort of deviation from the playbook, you’re watching the wrong movie.

Bill O’Reilly is wrong about Redacted. The film is not anti-military or anti-American. It’s anti-good.