"Redacted" a shocking and deeply moving Iraq drama

By Ray Bennett

VENICE, Italy (Hollywood Reporter) - Veteran director Brian De Palma's filmmaking skills seldom have been as razor-sharp as they are in his sensational new film, "Redacted," about members of a U.S. Army squad who rape and murder a 15-year-old Iraqi girl and slay her family.

Made on HD video and employing images from digital cameras, video recorders, Internet uploads and old-fashioned film, De Palma's movie is a ferocious argument against the engagement in Iraq for what it is doing to everyone involved.

The harrowing film should find responsive audiences everywhere. It screened in competition at the Venice International Film Festival.

Made so expertly that it appears to be assembled from genuine footage, the film details the extraordinary psychological pressure suffered by young soldiers on checkpoint duty in occupied areas of Iraq. It then follows one unit as two of its members skew monstrously out of control.

De Palma's screenplay is outstanding, and he draws wonderfully naturalistic performances from his youthful cast. While sympathetic to the young men who lose their way in horrible circumstances, the film is nevertheless unflinching in its depiction of the horrors that can result.

A fictional story based on real events, "Redacted" distills images from an array of sources to tell its story, beginning with those captured by Angel Salazar (Izzy Diaz), a young soldier who hopes the footage will buy his way into film school. Clean-cut Lawyer McCoy (Rob Devaney) also wields a video camera, but Salazar goes to extremes making a daily record of almost everything he sees.

That includes conversation with the other guys in the unit: Reno Flake (Patrick Carroll), a doper whose name is apt; B.B. Rush (Daniel Stewart Sherman), a blowhard with a lot of body fat; Gabe Blix (Kel O'Neill), who likes to read John O'Hara; and two sergeants, Sweet (Ty Jones) and Vazques (Mike Figueroa). They goof around for the camera off-duty. Salazar even records them on-duty, so when one is blown to pieces by a bomb left in roadside trash, he gets it all.

By then, footage from a French documentary about the unit has made clear how the monotony and constant fear of maintaining checkpoints grinds down the men. Constantly being told they have to remain on-duty for a further tour, they are drained and on edge. The documentary reports that during 24 months, 2,000 Iraqis were killed at checkpoints with merely 60 proved to be insurgents. In one such incident, a pregnant woman and her baby are killed when her brother taking her to the hospital races through the unit's checkpoint thinking he's been waved on.

Rush and Flake are especially vulnerable to demonizing an enemy they don't recognize or understand. Their plan to rape the daughter of a recently arrested Sunni man comes up almost idly but becomes one of deadly intent.

De Palma uses all his considerable talent to make clear what has happened to these men. The performances, especially by Carroll as the callously indifferent Flake and Devaney as the conscience-stricken McCoy, are first-rate.

The director makes great use of Handel's "Sarabande," the somber tones familiar as the main title music in Stanley Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon." It's a reminder that nothing depicted in this film is new.

Cast:

Angel Salazar: Izzy Diaz

Specialist B.B. Rush: Daniel Stewart Sherman

Reno Flake: Patrick Carroll