Redacted
REDACTED (Brian DePalma, 2007)
* (Has redeeming facet)
With the possible exception of the poorly remembered (poor both in terms of the specificity of my recollections and my recollections of its quality) WISE GUYS, I can't think of another film wherein DePalma thoroughly denied his own talents. By choosing to tell this story through the media lenses of non-filmmakers and less-talented filmmakers, DePalma drains REDACTED of any of the cinematic virtues typical to even his most middling films, seems satisfied with a mise-en-scene cribbed from undergraduate acting classes, and replaces his typically all-encompassing wit with angry, simple ironies.
All one is left with (beyond frustration) is the clarity that DePalma's anger is real (and not exploitative) but, in this neutered presentation, to no real effect. It's inexplicable that he appears to have mislaid the felicity with which he typically incorporates multiple points of view into his films without sublimating his gifts. It's as depressing to consider how much more of DePalma was in his work-for-hire on MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE or the immature and misguided OBSESSION than in this undeniably personal film as it is to consider how much more media attention attended the release of this, the worst film in 20+ years from America's greatest living filmmaker, than welcomed the release of his genuinely accomplished and moving diptych on life and art: MISSION TO MARS and FEMME FATALE. Skip REDACTED and watch one or both of those films again or for the first time.
Mentioned in this review...
* (Has redeeming facet)
With the possible exception of the poorly remembered (poor both in terms of the specificity of my recollections and my recollections of its quality) WISE GUYS, I can't think of another film wherein DePalma thoroughly denied his own talents. By choosing to tell this story through the media lenses of non-filmmakers and less-talented filmmakers, DePalma drains REDACTED of any of the cinematic virtues typical to even his most middling films, seems satisfied with a mise-en-scene cribbed from undergraduate acting classes, and replaces his typically all-encompassing wit with angry, simple ironies.
All one is left with (beyond frustration) is the clarity that DePalma's anger is real (and not exploitative) but, in this neutered presentation, to no real effect. It's inexplicable that he appears to have mislaid the felicity with which he typically incorporates multiple points of view into his films without sublimating his gifts. It's as depressing to consider how much more of DePalma was in his work-for-hire on MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE or the immature and misguided OBSESSION than in this undeniably personal film as it is to consider how much more media attention attended the release of this, the worst film in 20+ years from America's greatest living filmmaker, than welcomed the release of his genuinely accomplished and moving diptych on life and art: MISSION TO MARS and FEMME FATALE. Skip REDACTED and watch one or both of those films again or for the first time.
Mentioned in this review...
Labels: brian depalma, femme fatale, mission to mars, mission: impossible, obsession, redacted
posted by Bret LaGree at 12:57
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