Final Analysis: DePalma's Redacted - Thumbs Down! - SPOILER ALERT

[ddeclue]

I guess it is ending now since they are showing the still pictures mentioned in the descriptions.

Viewer warning: This movie contains multiple scenes of truly gruesome violence including a beheading, a rape, an IED explosion, and a shooting at a checkpoint that rival or surpass anything you've seen in Saving Private Ryan, Apocalypse Now or in Schindler's List.

I found the portrayal heavy handed and one-sided and in some ways very realistic and in other ways very unrealistic.

Technical portrayals of uniforms and weapons, equipment, and locations seemed very realistic. The total lack of officers and NCO's supervising this squad of soldiers seemed highly unrealistic.

I found the "U-tubization" film style to be faddish, distracting and annoying. I know there is an internet, the whole world does but constantly switching styles and formats really detracted from my ability to stay in the moment of the film.

The effort to portray the soldiers as almost uniformly to a man as villians I found inappropriate and unrealistic and it will backfire on DePalma in his attempt to create a piece of film that would make Americans want to end the war. Had he given a more even handed depiction of the war or even of this particular real life incident it would work much better. An actual documentary based on the facts would have been much more persuasive than this very heavy handed treatment of DePalma's.

I actually find the actual news coverage of the war that has been on HDNet (Dan Rather Reports or other programs) to be much better than either this movie was or than the main stream media does it.

I'm no fan of the war and want to see it ended ASAP but I'm not a fan of this movie either. I certainly don't agree with FauxNew loudmouth Bill O'Reilly that it should be censored or banned but I do think that DePalma has done the movement to end the war in Iraq more harm than good with this film.

Doug D.
Orlando, FL