The other two - rookie Flake and bullheaded Rush - are more in the moment, filled with a poisonous hatred for their faceless, unpredictable enemy. Two of these characters - Salazar, the video diarist, and McCoy, a budding lawyer - are clearly ‘thinkers,’ uncertain about their position, questioning of authority. War, for them, involves a lot of waiting around and inspecting vehicles, arguing amongst themselves and shooting mistrustful glances at the local populace, all of whom are suspected insurgents.
It’d be hard to argue for Redacted on the strength of its cinematic merits, but it is an involving, ultimately affecting piece of work.Ĭonstructed entirely from faked snippets of video diaries, news reports, Youtube postings and documentary footage, the film follows four American soldiers stationed at a busy vehicle checkpoint in a mid-sized Iraqi town. This is an angry and immediate film, scattershot and diffuse, the cinematic equivalent of a hastily written protest song that doesn’t quite rhyme, but gets its point across nonetheless. Redacted is the higher profile of the two, directed by a Hollywood A-lister (when he wants to be) striving hard for relevance and impact, at the expense of subtlety, character and perhaps posterity.
But in a country where even the anti-war demonstrators claim they’re marching in support of their boys, can these films find a sympathetic audience, or even a distributor? So is America ready for Redacted and Battle For Haditha, two films which attempt to depict a darker side of America’s brave fighting men? Are they ready for films which show American troops as sadists, as murderers, as rapists and torturers, as frustrated and helpless children lashing out at anyone within range? The rest of the world seems more than ready, crying out for a representation of the American soldier as something other than hero or victim, or both1. Even in the wake of Abu Ghraib and Haditha, even when all the evidence points to the contrary, this perception persists. Filmmakers like Robert Redford, liberal comedians like John Stewart may blame the White House, blame the officers, blame the system itself, but they never, ever blame the grunts. However corrupt and misguided the politicians may become, however desperate and devious the generals, it’s generally accepted that the American fighting man is a hero, struggling bravely for his country, or his family, or for Freedom. One of the few issues that seems to unite the religious right and liberal left in American politics and society is their support for the troops. Because in Hollywood the Iraq war, just like Vietnam before it, has become something else, a place where tortured heroes endure baptisms of fire, where brave (if often misguided) servicemen learn lessons about life and the world, often through violent clashes with faceless, brown skinned, babble-speaking hordes. This is a war between two sides equally capable of brutality, equally fuelled by hate and racial prejudice, equally willing to view the other as monstrous and animal. Finally, on a cinema screen, we’re seeing accurate representations of the war we see every night on our televisions. This applause was not for the film, but for its message.
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At the public screening I attended, the appearance of the director’s name was the signal for a torrent of enthusiastic applause, and a cry from somewhere in the back: ‘about time!’ Brian De Palma’s new film Redacted ends with a photographic montage of bloody horrors: Iraqi civilians, many of them children, the victims of grenades and gunfire, the innocent casualties of American involvement in that benighted country.
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