My radio reviews do not focus on technical and cinematic elements, because the station asked me to focus on the social issues of the films. And the reviews are limited to a very short time span, so they are kind of snacky pieces that do a very broad stroke. It took me a few weeks just to begin to feel out my pacing, and now the fulltime host is back and my slot is over! So this is the last review for Radio Pacifica. It certainly isn't my last film analysis or review for this blog.

In this written exploration, I go more into cinematic and technical elements.

Angel Salazar (Izzy Díaz), the cat who brings us into this film as narrator. He represents the media, and this is told to us repeatedly in extremely heavy-handed ways, as if his toting a camera everywhere weren't enough evidence.

These first scenes are, sadly, where you first begin to think to yourself "Jeez this is some self-conscious acting, I sure hope it smoothes out." To be fair, Salazar was one of the better actors. It wasn't he that made me uncomfortable. And I do try to balance out earnestness and importance of a film's message with technical faults. But this film was nearly unwatchable for a combination of two reasons. One was the bad acting throughout the film/stagey scenes that felt not real but iconic. Invariably in a film about media, people will defend this type of thing saying that since it is about Media, it is self-reflexive. But there is no denying that in many places, for various reasons, this movie felt jarringly "fake."

But it is an odd shape of a movie, a mockumentary based on a real event that uses the "direct address" [actors speak to camera, and "break the fourth wall" of cinema] almost entirely, whether it be in the shape of a newscast, a French documentary on the Iraq War, a diogetically placed [within context of the narrative] videocamera and surveillance cameras. So the feeling of "real" is reached for by the instances of these frameworks we know so well, but because of the confluence of so many of them (as well as the poor acting moments), I'm not sure we get there but for a handful of usually horrific scenes.

A "newscast" moment. This might have been a moment of the French documentary. The constant juxtaposition of different types of media—surveillance cam, military videos of interrogations/counseling sessions, news, handheld video, and the actual film's "eye" made for a strange space for the audience to be sitting "in." There was nothing separating POV from POV, and one would flow right into the next.

This choice, of course, can be reasonably defended by pointing to the fact that the film is about media and about framing. It makes for a disorienting P.O.V.

The film was, as you can see by many of these shots, well photographed, and most of the time, felt very authentic regarding art direction.

I very much enjoyed how we witness things, (FINALLY), from the Iraqis point of view. And we are given a bit more opportunity to understand just how their lives are being disrupted. There is nothing new in this film, though, it's all horror we've known about for years.

In fact, most of the scenes feel as if we are hitting "marks" (Hey there's the Checkpoint Frisk! There's the Mirrors Under the Car! There's the Car Rushing the Checkpoint! There's the Insurgent Planting the IED! There's the Snatching of the Soldier!) And this makes sense, too, because these are all iconic events that play out (and play out again) in this war that is being broadcasted to us by the media (or partially broadcasted to us by the media, as de Palma would remind us). But it does make for a fake feel, as if every scene is about to be stamped on gold in a museum somewhere, as if they are representative rather than real. And I suppose they are.

Maybe that's part of the oddness while you watch. You are never quite sure if you are supposed to watching something real, or something representative. Another self-reflexive point being underlined by de Palma? Or just a confusing result of much passion guiding a film about a war still ongoing? As I mentioned in my review, we've had a lot of time to think on Vietnam before our classic "Vietnam" flicks came out. You could say that this one here, coming out in the midst of the "fog" stil, would be like trying to write a song about Katrina's devastation while the waters are still rising. But I guess that's why de Palma focused on this one story [based on the gangrape and murder of a 14 year old girl from South of Baghdad by US GIs]. It was a clear case of the media's complicity in our ignorance, and even the Army itself is not spared from blame in this.

We get a view of how hot and hellishly dull (and tense) the day can be for a soldier. I really almost expected to hear the Doors start playing on these shots.

A car rushes the checkpoint. Reno "Flake" Flake (Patrick Carroll), one of the soldiers follows protocol, and after yelling numerous times at the car to stop, opens fire on the vehicle. Killing a pregnant woman.

Turns out her brother was rushing her to the hospital.

Here are some more rather unbelievable moments where Flake's remorse is probed by questions I'd have a hard time imagining are standard fare in a war zone (but I can't be sure), and where we begin to get some unsettling insight into Flake's psychological makeup.

A few symbols are very often near Flake. They are a cross, a confederate flag, and a skull. He calls Iraqis "Sandniggers." He speaks of killing with a muted but visible and dark glee. We can certainly see how his character will play out.

Flake talks about how his first "killshot" didn't get him high or blow his mind like he thought, but was instead like gutting catfish or something equally mundane (to him). I found this character very hard to watch even this early.

We see now, via internet video, through the nightscope of an insurgent who watches as one of his number plants an IED near the GIs in retaliation for Flake's murder of the pregnant woman.

In the hitchcock tradition, we know the killing will occur, but we are made to wait for it. The bomb goes off at a "good" moment, that is, a surprising moment to the audience, even though we are biting our lip in nervous and dreadful anticipation—

—and kills one of the GIs violently.

A drunken poker game. Another very hard scene to watch. I'm not sure what messed with my stomach more. The actual rape scene or listening to the dark plans of these men gone mad in fantasy-sadist land, where it is a viable option to rape a young woman because you haven't had sex and your "fuckstick" is "raw" and "red" etc. From early on, the rape is hinted at by Salazar's asking Flake if he is "getting any" when Flake holds up a girly mag. It was disturbing to hear rape framed as a result of lack of sex and "getting any" discussed hand in hand with how much it bothered Flake to kill a pregnant woman (none). But de Palma may be telling us something about the state of war and the state of mind that makes war. And perhaps the nature of rape as related to the nature of war.

The rape was also framed as retaliation, it occurs after the soldiers begin to freak out because one of their number was blown up by an IED (again, after Flake shoots the pregnant woman dead). And by the end of the film, we feel it is gangs hitting each other. Death for death, and the idea of the "Iraq War" having a point is not even allowed to blossom in this view of the occupation. Instead, we see that killing begets killing, and never are any of the deaths enough to resolve the cycle that seem to benefit nobody.

Part of what made this film watchable at all was that two characters in it speak for the portion of the audience with a conscience (all of us, one would hope). Throughout, Blix (Kel O'Neill) and Mccoy (Rob Devaney) are protesting against the rape, against the immoral attitudes of Flake and B.B. Rush (Daniel Stewart Sherman).

They do not, however, act to stop the crime.

Needless to say, a terrible scene to witness. And this is a reason why I would not have seen this movie, outside of my reviewing capacity. I knew this was what the story was about before I saw the film. And I was outraged and overwhelmed emotionally just when the original event happened and I read about it. I do not normally go to watch such depictions.

The choice of nightscope vision to bring out an inhuman quality in the actors was chilling to see on the parts of the perpetrators, and almost a blessing when watching the girl, as it prevented you from connecting fully to her own eyes and pain just enough to be able to look in her face for the time de Palma asks us to.

A great moment, seeing the genuine anguish and outrage on the part of McCoy. He wants to know what happened inside the house. He could not bear to stay inside, but he can't rightly abandon his mates. Salazar plays the part of the complicit media. He willingly goes along on the crime and kill spree, "embedded" in a rape, so to speak. This is important, because it was his speaking up to go along that seemed to validate the event, finally. We see, in that Drunken Poker Planning scene, that two men are drunk and want to do this, and two men are horrified, sober(er) and tell them it is a ludicrous idea. Not until Angel Salazar speaks up and says "I think I'll have to go along on this little ride" does it seem that we are hearing the discussion of an actual plan.

In this shot above is where de Palma's rage is channeled, where he gets to scream at the media and call them vultures.

Salazar confesses to bad dreams. His filming gig seems to have lost the joy it once had. He originally planned to "get into film school" using his real experiences. But here, ashen faced and downcast and haunted, the reality of what he has witnessed—and helped to happen—has landed upon him fully.

In this scene, de Palma again castigates the media, as well as all of us watchers. He does it through the pained outburst by Salazar, who cries that people make and watch videos about the outrages of war, and then...."they do nothing."

Salazar is talking to his camera when a van screeches up behind him and kidnaps him. Another unbelievable moment, unfortunately. This shot captures perfectly why. There's just no way a soldier in a war zone, even talking to a camera (or at least I can say a "person who has their guard up to any degree at all, or even has ears") would not yet hear what was happening behind him. Note that he is still looking at the camera, he has not yet turned his head at all. And let us not forget that this van screeched to a stop a few seconds ago, let alone the fact that an arm has already reached through his field of vision.

I couldn't believe a seasoned director watched this and said "print." Perhaps some might say that he was making a point again about the media being oblivious to danger...but you really do have to maintain suspension of disbelief anyway. And the fact that Salazar was talking to the camera and on the phone still didn't convince me that so much action could happen behind him without him even flicking his head around.

We know this shot far too well. De Palma got it right with the murky, desaturated, green-tinted light, and everything else. This could have been lifted right from old news releases, and here is where you say "Oh, here's the Decapitation Shot.")

And so it is.

When my friend from film school sent me the original clip of an American getting their head cut off, back in 2004 or so, I didn't watch it. I couldn't. (He asked me "what kind of film graduate are you?" but I refused) Just as I did not watch the hanging of Saddam. I don't really enjoy snuff. It disturbs my mind. And knowing this was not real made it possible for me to sit through it. But just barely.

It's a plot twist I didn't really see coming, killing off the narrator. Perhaps that had a bit to do with feeling disoriented, as well, in terms of being the audience. The person who begins framing our tale for us vanishes halfway through.

And again, perhaps this feeling of confusion could reasonably be narratively justified by thinking to ourselves "What story is our own media telling us about the occupation? Does it make any sense? Is it coherent? Have they disappeared from their role and left us not knowing what is going on?"

Another disturbing shot. Salazar and his head. (This echoes an actual AP photograph, one which I incorporated into a Photoshop job back in Febrero called Happy Hellmaker Day.)

In these "insurgent POV shots" (even looking at a web page, as here) there is a murmuring of "Allah Akhbar" that is so empassioned and urgent it sounds sexual. It was a very disturbing touch. And the fact that when we see through that POV, we understand nothing and hear no speech but breathing and chanting in a foreign language makes the insurgents wholly alien and emotionally inaccessible. De Palma could have humanized resisters to an occupation, but he did not. (There are a few compassionate and humanizing moments when the father of the dead/raped girl is being interviewed, yet his fury and his threat are kept far away from any actual retaliation by insurgents against GIs.) And yet, the film is earning very angry comments on various threads on the Internet claiming the story is Treasonous.

Why? Because it doesn't gloss over the coldblooded gangrape and murder of an innocent girl?

Sometimes my country scares the shit out of me.

After the rape, and after Salazar's kidnapping and murder, BB and Flake attempt a memorial speech for their buddy. It ends up being a dark, veiled confession, and a sickly insinuating speech by Flake both reveling in his deed as well as threatening BB not to talk about the rape/murder.

Here they ham it up in the wake and midst of so much horror. It really is an unsettling scene.

As you can see, Flake is sitting atop a Confederate flag.

This is one of the "filmed" "interviews," as the Army probes the coverup. Here, we get to feel nauseated once more as Flake tells the Army that the girl had it coming, and scoffs at the term "rape," because the "hadji bitch" was "all over him."

Flake is painted as a psychotic, conscienceless monster.

But the way BB and Flake are demonized in this film bothers me. What is the message? Some troops are bad apples and the media covers it up? Do atrocities happen like this because murder runs in the families of some troops (as is revealed to us through a story about Flake's brother—another "wild card" like Flake—who died in prison on a murder rap), or because war is an impossible and horrible hell that breaks the human mind and buries the heart in confusion and pain? What is the solution, then, if stories like this happen because some soldiers are crazy to begin with? That we screen our soldiers better before we invade countries that have not attacked us?

I really feel that pinning the horrors of war (and this incident is not unusual in war) on two sick men rather than on the nature of war was a flinch, and deflects a major critique that should stand in any film about this era.

In the closing shot, we meet the full weight of the writer's sadness and the horror of what befell this innocent victim of a war that was started by and which benefits people far, far away from her.

A horrible tale, a true tale, and only one of many that could be told about this war. This one points mostly at the watchers, and asks how much responsibity they—we—bear for such a terrible spectacle. in important and timely message, but one that may not make it to us around the many obstacles that stand in between Redacted, and Good Filmmaking.

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You can find this series under On the Radio With Nezua! and you can find filim breakdown that I've done apart from the radio, look under At the Movies With Nezua!