By Dave McCoy
MSN Movies

Sept. 14, 2007

I'm currently 35,000 feet above eastern Canada, flying home from the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival. Before giving you my final thoughts on this year's fantastic fest, I'd like to offer this quick memo to airline executives: If you create an adults-only airplane, I'd be willing to pay double to fly on it. Hell, I'll buy season tickets. After more than a week of little-to-no sleep, fate has placed me in front of a boisterous child named Mateo, who is midway through his viewing of "Surf's Up" and is asking questions about every frame. And let's just say that Mateo doesn't possess an "indoor voice." Sigh.

And now back to your regularly scheduled film festival coverage ...

Last time I wrote, I was wrestling with my emotions about Brian De Palma's sensationalistic Iraq War drama, "Redacted." Well, it's been a few days and I'm still unsure how to feel about it. And I'm definitely in the minority on that. "Redacted" is designed to provoke strong, clear-cut emotions. It's the angriest film about the war that I've seen. It premiered at Venice last week and took little time in annoying the right-wing types; and when De Palma walked away with the Best Director award, many were not pleased. At Toronto, several colleagues and close friends were so enraged by the film that they wouldn't talk to me about it because I didn't share their hatred of it.

But, in my opinion, to hate this film is to miss the point. Is it flawed? Yes, very much so. However, it's also extremely gutsy and pulls no punches in presenting the horrible conditions, frustrations, contradictions and tragedies over in Iraq.

"Redacted" (the title means text that has been censored or blacked out) profiles an American unit in Samarra. Their stressful job is guarding Iraqi checkpoints, where they could be killed at any moment. The tension is obviously high, and when one of the soldiers is blown to bits by an insurgent bomb, the anxiety and anger spill over and two soldiers, Reno Flake and B.B. Rush, decide to exact revenge. Drunk and enraged, they decide to rape a 15-year-old girl who comes through the checkpoint daily. And that's the story of "Redacted"... the act and its aftermath (De Palma has covered this territory before, in "Casualties of War," about a rape during the Vietnam War).

While the story is straightforward (and based on a real incident from the war), the style is radical. In trying to capture how the war is being presented to the public, and also the chaotic situation, De Palma employs various visual patterns. The film starts as one soldier's video journal (he's using it to get into USC film school), then suddenly shifts into a French documentary covering the war. Later, De Palma uses surveillance cameras to capture secret conversations; he presents video blogs of a wife reading a letter to her husband, and a webcast of a father speaking to his son; he showcases Arabic terrorist Web sites that celebrate violent wins by the insurgency ... and so on. It's all dizzying and surreal and effective.

Sadly, though, De Palma should have spent as much time with his script as with his camera and editing equipment. The soldiers, for example, are either good or evil. Two men -- Lawyer McCoy (c'mon!) and Gabe Blix -- are guilt-ridden bystanders during the event, while Flake and Rush could have wandered in from an Alan Parker film, they are so one dimensional. One look at them and you know they are insane. These men have little depth and come across as caricatures. De Palma's anger at the situations is understandable; if he had bothered to fine-tune the characters as much as the situations, his film would be more than the manipulative, rabble-rousing experiment that it is.

De Palma returns to his late '60s/early '70s political roots with "Redacted." Back then, before he earned box-office success with "Carrie," he was making small, guerrilla-style films like "Greetings" and "Hi, Mom!" (the rape sequence in "Redacted" feels very much like the uncomfortable, stomach-churning "Be Black Baby" sequence of that latter film). After the disaster that was last year's "The Black Dahlia," it's good to see De Palma engaged and passionate again. If he stubs his toe and falls down occasionally, he also bloodies some noses along the way. This isn't something you probably want to see, but, in my opinion, everyone should. It'll make you mad, either way, and perhaps that's the point.

Odds and Sods

- "Redacted" wasn't the only film that I was in the minority on. I dug "Angel," the latest from French master François Ozon ("Swimming Pool"). It's unabashedly a '30s Hollywood melodrama, full of artifice, swelling music and histrionic acting. But it's also about a woman who writes romance novels, lives in her own sheltered imagination and pays heavily when the fantasy is shattered. So, in other words, the style fits the story; Ozon has a blast living in the past, and constantly winks at us. Well, those of us who stuck around. People ran out in droves. I guess some people don't want them to make 'em like they used to ...

- During my final meal in Toronto, I ventured to a nice restaurant with a group of fellow journalists/friends. Midway through the meal, I noticed a rat running on the floor. Two friends also noticed this, proving that I was not indeed drunk and seeing things. Usually, I'd have freaked. But, this year, my first thought was of "Ratatouille" and whether the little rodent prepared my beef carpaccio and Cobb salad.

- Outside of the two galas I attended, I didn't see any celebrities except one. Michael Moore was coming up an escalator as I was descending. He wore designer sunglasses and that damn baseball hat. Dude, you're no longer the man of the people. Please hang up the hat.

- I saw film critic Roger Ebert several times throughout the festival. He's still not talking, instead communicating through pad and paper as he recovers from cancer ... but he looked good. It was good to see him back at Toronto. Last year's festival wasn't the same without his presence.

- Finally, I decided to skip a few Hollywood films due to terrible word of mouth. I simply offer up these titles based on what I've heard from trusted sources, but obviously can't comment on them. Regardless, the response can't make the studios happy. "Across the Universe," the romance inspired by and featuring Beatles music, was described to me as way too precious and embarrassing. "Reservation Road," a revenge thriller starring Mark Ruffalo and Joaquin Phoenix and made by Terry George ("Hotel Rwanda"), was universally loathed. And finally, after suffering through "Crash" (the worst film of the decade), I refuse to see Paul Haggis' take on the Iraq War, "In the Valley of Elah." Sorry, but they don't pay me enough to suffer through his heavy-handed maladies.

But hey, what do I know? I dug "Angel" after all ...

Dave McCoy is lead editor for MSN Movies.