Redacted
Magnolia Pictures | Release Date: November 16, 2007 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
52
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 30 Critic Reviews
Positive:
16
Mixed:
10
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
The Hollywood ReporterRay Bennett
De Palma's screenplay is outstanding, and he draws wonderfully naturalistic performances from his youthful cast. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The result of the film is shocking, saddening and frustrating. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter 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. Read full review
75
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
The film is by turns strident, obvious, righteously angry and inspired. Read full review
75
New York PostKyle Smith
De Palma is extreme, visceral, usually in bad taste but almost always riveting. De Palma's Redacted, a no-budget fake documentary that imagines the circumstances behind a real rape and murder of a civilian girl committed by US troops in Iraq, is a piece of anti-war propaganda whose aims I don't agree with, but it jolted me nonetheless. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Love it, hate it, but be sure to watch it, because this odd and disturbing picture is as different as the war it reflects, and that difference is vast enough to seem profound. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
It isn't elegiac, but enraged. It doesn't look back with sorrow, but forward in dread. And it's made with a clear intention - to stop the Iraq war. Read full review
75
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Redacted is a bristling act of protest that obliterates a target it isn't aiming for. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)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. Read full review
70
The New YorkerDavid Denby
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. Read full review
70
TimeRichard Corliss
Redacted pretty successfully sustains a dual level of hysteria (in its content) and disinterest (in its film-long framing devices). It's an amazingly vigorous work for a filmmaker who turns 67 on Sept. 11... The movie is a cry of national shame; for De Palma, it's a new badge of honor for a wily old vet. Read full review
67
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean Axmaker
Under De Palma's cool disconnection is an anger, and it's this anger that drives his act of political theater. Read full review
67
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
As a manipulator of images and emotions, De Palma has few equals, and this is his most gripping film in at least a decade. Viewed simply as cinema and not as political rhetoric, it's often a kick in the guts -- even when it makes you roll your eyes. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
Despite its shortcomings, Redacted is nevertheless a film brimming with spontaneity and fury, and in a season of often-ambiguous films about the war in Iraq, there is a lot to be said for this kind of combustible energy. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneTasha Robinson
Like so many of his movies, Redacted is difficult to watch but queasily fascinating. Read full review
63
New York Daily NewsElizabeth Weitzman
Like "Lions for Lambs," Redacted is more significant in its sense of purpose than its uneven execution. Read full review
60
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
Brian De Palma's Redacted doesn't quite work as a movie. But it works as SOMETHING. Read full review
60
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
The most authentic thing about Redacted is the rage with which it was made. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubNoel Murray
As an expression of from-the-gut anti-war rage, Redacted is admirable, but as art, it's undercooked. Read full review
50
VarietyDerek Elley
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. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
DePalma's movie offers its own doctoring and processing, without delivering an ounce of real humanity - good or bad - in the bargain. Read full review
50
PremiereGlenn Kenny
The problem here, which vitiates the picture's ingenuity and causes it, finally, to sink like a stone, is in the physical execution of the material. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
It shows rare courage in protesting the widespread abuse of innocent Iraqis, but its pseudodocumentary form is full of awkward misfires (such as a protracted use of theme music from Barry Lyndon) and its acting is often terrible. Read full review
40
NewsweekDavid Ansen
if you're trying to make us believe we're watching "reality" by using a faux documentary style, you need actors who never look like they are acting, and this is where Redacted stumbles. Read full review
40
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
Its formal novelty aside, Redacted rarely hits the audience with a genuine shock or a clarifying insight. It churns through a set of ideas and emotions that are confusing and unpleasant, to be sure, but also, by now, dispiritingly familiar. Read full review
40
EmpireIan Freer
De Palma is incapable of making a dull movie, but poor performances and a see-sawing tone make this an unsatisfying experience. Read full review
33
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
For all of De Palma's studious multimedia trickery -- a valid, even inspired idea -- Redacted is so naive it's an embarrassment. Read full review
30
Washington PostDesson Thomson
The film's moral commentary is De Palma redux: same old Brian enjoying the peeping, bringing us into the guilt zone, then saying shame on all of us. Read full review
20
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
By any rational standard, this film is kind of a mess. Even if you agree with its politics, you will probably weep at the ineptitude of it all. Read full review
0
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
The Americans are portrayed with varying degrees of loathsomeness, but there's not much variety in the film. It's all an awful aberration. Read full review
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