I just watched Brian De Palma's Redacted (2007). Effective moments and a cool concept can't really compensate for the overall "What's the point?" feel I had when it finished.
I don't think many people on here would like it. Far too critical (and rightly so) of the war effort.
I thought it was decent at best...we praise experimental filmmakers like David Lynch when they try to break the curb....the problem with experimental filmmaking is the downflip of it when it doesn't really work.
My problem with REDACTED probably is that for a movie stremmed together from surveillance cameras, a soldier's camcorder, and Foreign Television coverage.....some moments are just too cinematically convenient.
Take that scene when that soldier has this speech of how he must stop his fellow comrades from commiting a horrendous warcrime...give me a fucking break. If this was CASUALTIES OF WAR, fine because it was a movie that admittedly was a fictionalized drama.
That said, there are three great scenes in REDACTED. One is when from a wide shot (via security surveillance), you have the soldier threaten to kill another as he's pushed up against the wall. Incredible.
Second is when the car races past the checkpoint, and its shot to hell.
Third is the ending...where real photographs of corpses have their faces digitally censored, as if a feeble attempt to cover up the obvious, which is ironic since producer Mark Cuban made that change over Brian DePalma's head, to avoid a possible lawsuit.
REDACTED itself was redacted...not by the government, but by the corporate bigwigs.
That said, I don't think REDACTED deserved the Bill O'Reilly heat or DePalma being called a "traitor." Couldn't Papa Bill simply have let this movie come and go this side of a pair of underpants, as it was destined to be before he came along and gave it free press of notoriety?
