Brian De Palma (1940, Newark, New Jersey) is an American film director, best known for directing the Al Pacino classic Scarface, and the Academy Award-winning film The Untouchables. Brian De Palma’s Redacted, a prizewinner in Venice and a polarizing selection at film festivals in Telluride, Toronto and New York opens today in New York and selected cities.
What De Palma has done is what is called a “mockumentary”, a fictional film done in a rage and fear documentary style. Not much a traditional plot, the film fictionalizes and dramatizes the Al-Mahmudiyah killings that took place outside Baghdad in March 2006, where five U.S. soldiers gang-raped and murdered a 14 year old girl, after first killing her parents and younger sister.
“Redacted” means to select or adapt (as by obscuring or removing sensitive information) for publication or release. Mr. De Palma’s premise, implicit in his choice of title and stated in many interviews and public pronouncements, is that the truth about Iraq has been edited and obscured, kept away from (not only) the American public.
Starting with the HD video diary of PFC Angel Salazar (Izzy Diaz), the view shifts soon to his platoon: Their mission is to guard the check points. The film ends with photos of the carnage in Iraq, just to get the point across the crime of supporting a country that in the last 24 months killed 2,000 Iraqis, and few were proven to be insurgents.
An unrivaled master of cinematic reality, De Palma’s film remixes raw images and videos culled from surveillance cameras, cellphones and Web sites. As he would like to say that the media environment is the real battlefield of contemporary, where everyone is, at least potentially, a fighter.
Written and directed by Brian De Palma; with: Izzy Diaz (Angel Salazar), Daniel Stewart Sherman (B. B. Rush), Patrick Carroll (Reno Flake), Mike Figueroa (Sgt. Jim Ross), Ty Jones (Master Sgt. Sweet), Rob Devaney (Lawyer McCoy), Kel O’Neill (Gabe Blix), Zahara Al Zubaidi (Farah) and Bridget Barkan (Judy McCoy). HDNet Films and Magnolia Pictures.
