"Redacted" is a metaphor for what De Palma and others believe is the fatal flaw of our Iraq strategy: You cannot enforce "freedom" at gunpoint. Now that some 200,000 Iraqis have died in the war, for whatever reason and at whatever hands, it is hard to see how many of the rest would be as grateful for our presence as we are assured they are. This is something Angel Salazar finds out during the filming of his documentary, although unfortunately his key footage is redacted in a very direct way.
You may be vaguely aware of a controversy involving De Palma and some of his own footage that was "redacted." This involved the montage of "actual" photographs from Iraq, which close the film. They were all actual at one point, but now some of them are staged, and others have been altered by having faces obscured by a black marker pen, lest the subjects' privacy be violated. Since they are dead, one doubts they would sue, but perhaps the black smudges make De Palma's point in another way.
The acting is curious. Some of it is convincing, and some of the rest is convincing in a different way: It convinces us that non-actors know they are being filmed and are acting and speaking slightly differently than they otherwise would. That makes some try to appear nicer, and other try to appear tougher or more menacing. That edge of inauthentic performance paradoxically increases the effect: Moments seem more real because they are not acted flawlessly.
The result of the film is shocking, saddening and frustrating. The latest polls show that the great majority of the American public has withdrawn its approval from the war and its architects. Why should it be a mystery that the Iraqis do not love us? Did our mothers not ask us, "How would you feel if someone did that to you?" Yes, they are killing us, too, but they live there, and we went a great distance for our appointment in Samarra.
The name of the real girl, who was actually 14, was Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi.
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