Movie Review

The review 'Redacted' is Repulsive by Ross Kaminsky is accurate enough as a surface-level depiction. But it ultimately misses the mark because the reviewer failed to properly understand what he was watching.

DePalma's film is not an entertainment vehicle, but an anthropological document, like 'Nanook of the North' and similar. As such, it presents a valuable and fascinating glimpse of the world as seen through the eyes of the Hollywood Left, an exotic tribe that occupies a uniquely sheltered and isolated ecological niche in Southern California. The group's heavy use of mind-altering drugs is not directly portrayed in the film, but the effects of the practice are apparent throughout, as events unfold within a pervasive, unrelenting paranoid miasma.

Reportedly a bizarre and disgusting experience for the few outsiders who have seen it, the film seems to have been produced for viewing by tribe members only, as a kind of sacramental ritual of shared community values. It will most likely find its true home in the Smithsonian, where it may eventually have value as an artifactual text, providing opportunities for study by future generations of scholars, and amusement for curious museum goers.

Byron