To me, this movie is perfection.

Excellent, smart action film.

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Redacted is different from other Iraq War films. Firstly, it doesn't portray the US soldiers as the heroes they aren't. I mean, some are heroes of course, but not all. Other films seem to have a way of twisting war crimes and crimes against humanity into pro-war propaganda, but this film makes no attempt at that. Although crudely edited in some parts, as though on MovieMaker or the like, and although some of the acting is slightly amateurish, I do have to give this film a 6. The main reason is due to the courageous nature as aforementioned. The film portrays events as they were, i.e. it was a war, nothing more, nothing less, and certainly not glamorous. It was nice to see a different perspective when it comes to modern war films. To conclude, without intending to contradict myself, I do feel some of the US soldiers could have been portrayed in a better light as, like all groups, it only takes a small minority to get the others a bad name. Worth a watch for something different.

Redacted is a brutal and realistic war drama from director Brian De Palma. Done in a documentary style; it reminded me of The Hurt Locker, with mostly hand held camera shots. The controversy surrounding the film is due to the fact that it is loosely based on the rape of a girl by a group of American soldiers in Iraq in 2006. The criticism stems from De Palma not adding the outcome of the jail sentences of the guilty in real life. The studio claims that it was done for legal reasons and they clearly state that it is a work of fiction. Aside from the politics, I found Redacted to be a better than average war movie. It is bloody and violent and the men in uniform are shown with all of the difficult choices they must make under horrific circumstances. Ignore the loud mouths like Bill O ' Reilly, another tough guy, like Hannity and Limbaugh, who never actually were in the military. Thank You, Mr. De Palma, for standing by your work.

Iraq calls America The Great Satan.REDACTED shows us why. Written and directed by Brian de Palma, we follow a small cadre of American troops for a few explosive havoc days of rape and murder in Samara, Iraq. Based on a real account of the rape and murder of a 15-year-old Samara girl, I researched the web for this particular incident... and ended up reading dozens of other cases.I stopped searching. Nothing unique about this movie's incident. It had become common practice with the ignorant thugs who had become the lowest swine on the planet - the Amerikan Military. (An Iraqi soldier comments that REDACTED shows one rape - while he has witnessed thousands.) ...And the Great Satan coalesces, laughing worms.American Military, like mongrels off their leashes, create more terrorism towards Iraqis than the other way 'round. And - at the risk of sounding like a broken record - one man bears the brunt of this blame. George W. Bush.Film aims so hard at being "reality TV" (by being lensed through various security cams, embedded reporter footage, hidden terrorist cams, cellphone video, online wives' videos, Arabic website footage, etc. - there are no actual "movie camera" master shots and cutaways), that the "natural" acting is anything BUT.The first action vignette is beautifully staged, as soldiers fight to keep their eyes open at a dull checkpoint, while Handel's Sarabande in D minor lulls us into a false sense of quietude. De Palma plays this scene like a French documentary, showing us the complications at just this one checkpoint. As the American troops describe how they've set up extensive Iraqi signage outlining checkpoint procedures, a French narrator tells us that studies show over half of Iraqis are illiterate; which means most of them cannot read the instructions and have no idea of checkpoint protocol at the Terrorist Amerikan Checkpoints.After nothing happening all day, all hell breaks loose when a car doesn't stop at its prescribed point. A pregnant woman is killed, and we see the massacre through the eyes of a non-American news report.Removing us from provincial American reportage enables us to perceive the incident with clearer vision; then de Palma drops us back into the ignorant provincialism of the American grunt camp; utterly remorseless and flippant, they refuse to comprehend how other cultures might misinterpret their hand signals or speech, blaming the driver for the massacre.Many would argue that these men are not representative of American soldiers. But if SOME soldiers are like this, it means those "some" are representing America. REDACTED raises the horrifying reality that these "some" are not the exception - they are the rule. We would know this if the information dribble from war zones was not being "redacted" by the duplicitous government (whole pages, lines and incriminating evidence obscured or removed from reports before being released to the public). Like "Rendition" or "Enhanced Interrogation," Redacted is merely another Great Amerikan Euphemism.The swinish Bushies will protest, "It's only a movie!" But even if we negate the atrocities these soldiers perpetrate, the checkpoints in that foreign land are a reality - CAUSING more violence and death than they curb (which Bush and his cabbagehead general, Petraeus, and puppetfool Bremer, refuse to acknowledge). "Over a 24-month period, U.S. troops killed 2,000 Iraqis at checkpoints. 60 were confirmed insurgents. No U.S. soldiers were charged in any of these incidents."The stars of REDACTED are all unknowns, so when the hard bigotry comes, we accept it: "nuke 'em all... scorched earth... ragheads... dwarf Ali Babas..." every insult you've ever heard is compacted into this movie.The Amerikan Military and Propaganda Government have dehumanized the Iraqis so morbidly that American grunts feel entitled to these objects as "spoils of war"; premeditating and performing the rape and murder of the 15-year-old girl was just another rowdy frat night for the rapists, even though some of the troop protested - but not enough to actually STOP the incident.Grunts have been indoctrinated to believe they are performing a FAVOR for Iraq by "overthrowing Saddam, bringing democracy to them - and not even a thank you!" Yet the fact that their Christian feet are on Islamic soil only increases the hostility - an Arab religious tenet is to keep non-Islamic feet off their "holy" land. but George W. Bush will never "get" it.As revenge for the 15-year-old girl, a soldier is kidnapped and beheaded by Iraqis. But now de Palma shows us the American version of this news, and we see exactly how deluded and in denial the American government keeps itself, as a military spokesman talks of the "barbaric and brutal nature of the terrorists and their complete disregard for human life." And though one soldier wants to bring charges against his own men, the first thing that comes into question in American courts is the sanity of the soldier bringing the charges. The frustration of this insular system of denial and protectionism will make your head swell and smoke come out your ears.Ironically, de Palma's movie ends with redactions that the movie studios made before release, in a last brutal segment called "Collateral Damage - Actual pictures from the Iraq War." We do not see every picture de Palma intended us to see. But we see enough: children with burned skin, screaming. Families holding their heads, screaming, while their child lies slaughtered on the ground; a man cradling his naked son, covered in blood; splotches of blood all over a screaming child's dress; a dead woman with eyes wide open, lying in a pool of blood, her limbs removed. This last picture is apparently the Samara girl.And only one question raises its ugly, swollen weasel head: When will The Great Satan, George W. Bush, be brought to justice?

The film is simple and direct and does not necessitate a long story to tell the "plot" or the "drama". In Iraq the Americans are doing a bad job. In that case, a small squadron is pacifying a small zone. One day two or three of them get berserk and they invade a house, arrest one man, and then later, at night, they will come back to rape a fifteen year old girl and they will kill everyone, mother, father, grandfather and smaller sister. It will come out, especially after the insurgents capture one man of this small unit and plainly slaughter him with a knife and behead him. The film shows how no justice will come out of that story and even the GI who will reveal the story on the Internet will become the real culprit for the investigating unit. He will end up guilty in his mind forever after he is released from his military position. He will always considers himself as the one who saw one girl being raped, killed and then burnt while her whole family was being assassinated and he did nothing because one of the killers gave him the order to get out and stand watch in the street and he obeyed. There is no clean war. War is always dirty, but there are some wars where we can find some justification for that dirt, be it patriotic or defensive, or whatever. In this case there is no justification though we could give volumes of explanations. It would amount to nothing but that: take young males away from their natural environment, put them in a hostile and completely different environment, lock them up in cramped housing conditions forcing the most extreme promiscuity onto them and among them, without any kind of sexual satisfaction possible in a country like Iraq where prostitution could not even be thought of, and either they accept to satisfy their hunger within their promiscuity, one way or another often leading to inner conflicts and fights, or by forcing their sexual needs onto unwilling women outside, young if possible of course. Just sending human beings in such conditions is a crime against humanity and war should be banned. But the worst part of it is that this war was entirely decided against the better judgment of the whole world and exclusively justified with lies hammered onto us by a bunch a liars. You can imagine then how horrifying the vision of the last still images of collateral victims can be.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID