'Redacted', or the abuse of power

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think the movie deals with issues such as abuse of power, lack of commitment from the powerful towards the unprotected and censorship; a proof of this is that Brian de Palma was not allowed to tell the real story on which the film is based due to legal restrictions and had to make an adaptation of it.

 

I think another subjects in this film are the lack of communication (as we can see when the soldiers shoot the car with the pregnant woman inside without understanding it's on its way to Hospital) and how people get mad and lose contact with reality when they follow an idea with no clear aim in sight (it seems the Americans didn't know what they were doing in Irak).

 

An interesting thing about the name of the movie is that 'redacting' something in this context means 'editing' the information which is told in a piece of news; how truth seems to change when you tell things in a way or another.

 

SYNOPSIS

 

This film is about the real-life rape and killing of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl by U.S. soldiers with shocking images that will leave some viewers in tears.

Inspired by one of the most serious crimes committed by American soldiers in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, it spares the audience no brutality to get its message across.

Made in a deliberately episodic form, Redacted tells various stories about the war in Iraq, ostensibly from different viewpoints. One film portion by a French filmmaker tells the story of U.S. soldiers watching over checkpoints. In another episode, a superior soldier makes a casual mistake dealing with garbage that was set out in a road and is blown to bits. It's all leading to the pivotal rape and murder of the pretty girl who is discovered by the soldiers on a raid of an Iraqi house in order to find evidence. One night, the drunken and mostly morally lost U.S. soldiers discuss going back for the "skank" whom they saw in the house they raided. One soldier straps a camera to his helmet, and the footage of the girl's rape is secured.

The rest of the film mostly deals with measures taken by the army against the criminals. A final scene has a soldier from the criminals' unit confessing to his friends a war story that he will never forget: the plundering and murder of the Iraqi girl.