The grassroots cynicism about the War on Terror has finally moved Brian De Palma to make the most openly hostile movie of his career. In fact this is arguably the first time the consummate stylist has laid a finger on the real world. Redacted is not just a damning inside account of loud and bullish rednecks patrolling an Iraqi town in which they have precisely no interest, apart from leaving the benighted place. It is a virtuoso piece of experimental film.

The director's account of American jarheads plotting to rape a 14-year-old local girl is assembled from video diaries, CCTV footage, mobile phones, laptop cameras, news reports and online websites. The film looks as if it has been glued together after someone tossed it off a cliff. But the documentary intensity makes it a compelling and, dare I say it, believable fiction.

The action centres on a small unit of soldiers who are clearly not concerned with winning hearts or minds. Indeed they have no idea why they are in Iraq at all. The soldier who films the unit on patrol, while manning roadblocks and searching fearful locals at gunpoint, wants to use his video diaries to secure a place at film school.

“So what's it feel like after smoking your first civilian?” he asks a fellow jock. “Truth be told, it's not everything it's cracked up to be,” drawls Flake. “It's like gutting a catfish.”

This grunt's-eye view of Iraq would be comical if it wasn't so alarmingly familiar. The soldiers have no idea how to divine the innocents from the insurgents. After a while they don't actually care. The premeditated plan to rape the teenage girl who lives at home with a respectable family is born of sheer boredom. The night-time raid, and the murderous panic when their plan goes pear-shaped, looks like some sort of ghastly parody of The Blair Witch Project. The military inquisition into the incident is a blinkered scandal. One guilt-stricken soldier posts a badly disguised version of the event online. Surveillance cameras at the American base capture others being bullied into silence. The way De Palma stitches this multimedia montage into a damning narrative is cinema at its angry and exhilarating best.

15, 86mins

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