Film Review

Redacted (Brian De Palma/2007)

Where did you stray Brian De Palma? After making Femme Fatale you went ahead and made a film that is many ways your worst film to date.. Why? The immense frustration of being A De Palma fanboy is that while his erotic Hitchcockian thrillers have been consistently grand, his ventures outside of that territory feels dangerous and uneven, filled with many land-mines for every quality outing outside of the safe zone. In Redacted, De Palma attempts political cinema once again to spectacularly disasterous results.

However, unlike the De Palma who made the wonderful Hi Mom, this De Palma only succeeds at making a cartoonish, one dimensional film about a multi-layered event. His attempts to give the project multiple sides is laughable, none of these documentaries or home videos offer insight into the psychological situation the invaders are placed under. It’s almost like De Palma decided to transplant the arch-types of previous war films onto his war film and make them real. Predictably his attempt doesn’t work.

His well meaning protest of the truth about the Iraq war merely comes across as laughably one sided despite it’s best efforts to do the opposite. Please take a hint after two commercial and critical failures and go back to the drawing boards.  Lightning can strike again. Oh, as an added thought: there’s an awful twist towards the end of the film that’ll have your jaw agape for many reasons. None of them are the right reason.