In his 1989 film Casualties of War, Brian De Palma took a hard look at the rape and killing of a girl by American troops during the Vietnam war. It was based on a true incident reported by Daniel Lang in a New Yorker article. Now in Redacted, he probes a similar incident by a small band of American soldiers stationed at a checkpoint in Iraq. In an interview about this fictional story based on real events, De Palma has stated:
"Once again a senseless war has produced a senseless tragedy. I told this story years ago in my film Casualties of War. But the lessons from the Vietnam War have gone unheeded. But how to tell the story today? And how did it all begin? Last year at the Toronto Film Festival I was approached by a representative of HDNET films who asked if I would be interested in making a film using high definition video. I said I would if I could find a subject matter that would be best explored in the medium. Then I read about an incident in the Iraq war where members of a U.S. army squad had reportedly raped a 14-year-old girl, slaughtered her family, shot the girl in the face and set her body on fire. How could these boys have gone so wrong? In searching for the answers, I read soldier's blogs, books, watched soldier's home made war videos, surfed their web sites, and their YouTube postings. It was all there, and all in video."
Angel Salazar (Izzy Diaz) is a member of an army squad stationed in Iraq who is using his video camera to record his experiences; he hopes that the material he is gathering will help get him into a film school. Among those caught on video are Reno Flake (Patrick Carroll), an angry young man; B. B. Rush (Daniel Stewart Sherman), a bigot who is obsessed with sex; Gabe Blix (Kel O'Neil), an intellectual who is reading John O'Hara; Lawyer McCoy (Rob Devaney), a soldier who marches to the beat of his own drum; and two sergeants (Mike Figueroa, Ty Jones) who are trying very hard to keep these men alert to the dangers that face them every day.
In contrast to this video is a French documentary made about the daily happenings at the checkpoint. It points out that over a 24-month period, 2000 Iraqis have died at these checkpoints with only 60 confirmed to have been insurgents. We also see bits and pieces from an Arab TV channel, Islamic fundamentalist websites, and other media. A terrifying incident takes place when Flake and Rush open fire on a car driven through the barricade. It turns out that Iraqi driver was a young man trying to get a pregnant woman to the hospital. The two soldiers show no remorse and, in fact, claim that the rules of engagement are on their side. One of their sergeants dies in a bomb explosion that is an act of revenge by the community.
After a night raid on a private house, Flake and Rush decide to return to the place to rape an Iraqi girl who lives there. Blix wants nothing to do with the mission, and McCoy goes along to stop his comrades from doing more harm. He fails to stop the violence which results in all the members of the household being executed. De Palma makes his point even more cogently with a photo montage of real-life bodies of Iraqi victims, so-called "collateral damage."
