Redacted

Once again I am behind in my review posting, so please forgive me if my memory of the movie is cloudy.

Over the last couple of months I've slowly been making my way through the "Iraq war" movie glut of last year having seen In The Valley of Elah, The Kingdom, Lions for Lambs and now finally Redacted.

I was curious to know why Redacted lives on the "Restricted" shelf of the local video store, beside the soft core porn films and was disappointed that the rating was earned for a particularly gruesome rape sequence rather than for violent or profane content. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The movie, which stars no one, is directed by Brian DePalma and pretends to be assembled from video footage collected by several groups - an army grunt, a french news channel, and some security video footage.

If this sounds a lot like the recently reviewed here Vantage Point, it's because it is, though this time we are at least spared having to see the same sequence over and over again.

The story revolves around a group of army grunts whose tour has just been extended as they deal with the high stress environment of operating an army checkpoint. Looking to burn off some steam after an incident involving the shooting of a pregnant woman during a "routine" checkpoint stop, a couple of the boys decide to go and have some "fun" - raping a young Iraqi woman and killing her family while two of their comrades look on in horror - unable to do anything to stop them.

Unfortunately the movie is far more interested in scoring points against war in general and the "war on terror" in particular to delve into the true motivations and emotions of the characters involved. The villains are cookie-cutter and the speech given by the "hero" who presented evidence against his former friends at the end of the movie is forced and contrived.

Pain scale: 6 out of 10.