本片讲述了美国陆军在伊拉克的一个小分队迫害一名无辜的伊拉克女孩及她的家人的过程,尖锐地揭示了战争带来的无辜死亡和伊拉克人面对战争时的无助。
对话文本:(系普特网友整理,文本只包括旁白影评部分,不包括电影原声。)
Redacted is a new film written and directed by Brian De Palma. It has some similarities to an earlier film of his--Casualties of War--in that both of these movies deal with an atrocity committed by American military personnel overseas. Casualties of War was about Vietnam. This movie is about the war in Iraq. It tracks fairly closely the details of a real event (uh, crime) committed by American servicemen in the town of Mahmudiya.
But Redacted doesn't just dramatize the story in a straightforward, narrative way. It uses the techniques by which we've become familiar with--what's going on in Iraq--so that every piece of footage, everything we see in this movie is as if it has been filtered through another camera so you see the video diary of one of the soldiers, you see security camera footage, you see website video clips, you also see a very clever parody of a French documentary about American soldiers guarding a checkpoint.
And the point seems to be that, the truth, which is what Mr. De Palma is trying to show us, is always filtered, always mediated, always coming from a certain point of view. It's an interesting idea and it's an interestingly made film. I wish it was a more forceful and persuasive one. One of the big problems is that the acting style doesn't really gibe with the mode of visual presentation. Visually it's supposed to be very raw and immediate and unfiltered as if you put the little handheld cameras right there in the action. But the dialogue, and especially the acting feels very mannered and very stagy.
And the arguments that they have about the larger mission in Iraq and also about the particular things that they are doing while they are there which are truly horrific seem very canned and potted and not really worked out and embedded in the dramatic reality. There are a lot of ideas in this movie about war and what soldiers do in war and about the truth and how it gets out and about the moral responsibility of people to tell the truth and seek the truth. But these ideas kind of float on the surface and get stuffed into the characters' mouths so that you don't really feel the impact that I think De Palma wants you to feel. You don't feel as angry, as outraged, as confused as bewildered, as furious as he clearly does in making this movie.