But there's an inverse to this as well since De Palma is filming this with a script and with actors (who arguably are good at being naturalistic two-dimensional soldiers), since there is a stylization, yet without calling attention to the self-consciousness the audience feels during this. We know that when a security camera or when Angel's camera put on a seat meant to be shut off captures objectively what's going on- like the 'what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas' scene or the plot to go after the family.

It's suffice to say that this technique is almost a comment on itself, and it's one of the curious ideas behind the experiment of Redacted that makes it interesting. Instead of the carefully plotted and directed shots of films like Dressed to Kill or Carlito's Way (or, for that matter, the similar-in-premise Casualties of War) we get the messiness of raw camera-work from the soldier, the embedded journalists, the news media covering the story, web-casts obviously out of you-tube, and as the one 'official' kind of film-making a French documentary crew doing a film on the group of soldiers covering the checkpoint. Of course there are moments when the characters realize that they're on video, and suddenly they either get irate and continue acting as themselves, or they start to posture for the camera. But De Palma's story, based on real events which were 'fictionalized' up to a point only for legal reasons, indicts the whole process of viewing things through the filter of the lens. This might be enough for a film covering a horrible tragic turn of events like depicted in Redacted, where two soldiers rape a teenager and kill and burn her and her baby sister. Like Blair Witch Project, we're seeing things 'as-they-happen' by the view-point of a camera that a soldier, Angel, is carrying and using as an in to get into film school someday. But what stays true to De Palma as an auteur is the idea of voyeurism, or the watchers and the audience as the ones who continue to watch, and like Godard with his video experiments, Redacted is about its subject but it's also about process. In his film, the media is the message, but only in part- it's about how media is used, or how subjective perceptions are taken into account, for coverage of a conflict which ironically enough has not had the kind of coverage seen in America as in the local Iraq and European media. The legendary words of Marshall MacLoughan, 'The media IS the message', couldn't be further seen played out as in Redacted, Brian De Palma's latest film which ventures the director back into his experimental early days as a filmmaker in New York city. I think this one deserves at least a 6 out of 10. Is this film a bit of an unholy mess? Yes, but see it anyway and make your own mind up. (50% of Iraqis can't read the signs at US checkpoints!) In particular, it does an excellent job illustrating the clash between the respective cultures of Iraq and America. I've seen all the recent films about Iraq ('Valley of Elah', 'Lions for Lambs', 'Rendition' ) and think that 'Redacted' provides insights none of the others do. Some of the dialog between the soldiers in the unit is compelling in its own way Similarly so the scenes with the Iraqi reporters and 'embeds.' The scenes at the checkpoint are particularly well done. Yes, the acting leaves something to be desired, the 'mixed-media' approach is distracting, and there are some manipulative moments (the beheading, the final still) But this is still an eye-opening film on the state of events in Iraq and the trials that *both* Iraqis and Americans have to deal with daily. Despite the many criticisms by others on this site, Redacted is a compelling film based on an actual incident that occurred in Baghdad in 2006.

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