63
Like so many of his movies, Redacted is difficult to watch but queasily fascinating.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
60
Brian De Palma's Redacted doesn't quite work as a movie. But it works as SOMETHING.
70
Redacted is hell to sit through, but I think De Palma is bravely trying to imagine his way inside an atrocity, and that he’s onto something powerful with his multisided approach.
70
New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein
Anyone who sees the suffering faces of the victims in "Casualties" and "Redacted" knows that De Palma not only despairs over what he’s showing us but implicates his own medium--his own male gaze--in the crimes against nature.
50
Deeply felt but dramatically unconvincing "fictional documentary" -- inspired by the March 2006 rape and killings by U.S. troops in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad -- has almost nothing new to say about the Iraq situation and can't make up its mind about how to package its anger in an alternative cinematic form.
60
The most authentic thing about Redacted is the rage with which it was made.
58
As an expression of from-the-gut anti-war rage, Redacted is admirable, but as art, it's undercooked.
75
Christian Science Monitor by Peter Rainer
He intercuts documentary sequences from a French news crew and also includes Arab website footage of insurgents and YouTube confessions from soldiers who witnessed a barbarous act, which we also see, involving the platoon and a young Iraqi girl. The concept is audacious but the actors are too theatrical.
90
The Hollywood Reporter by Ray Bennett
De Palma's screenplay is outstanding, and he draws wonderfully naturalistic performances from his youthful cast.
88
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
The result of the film is shocking, saddening and frustrating.