"Redacted" has received mixed reviews. Critic Michael Medved said "it could be the worst movie I've ever seen." Gary Thompson wrote in "The Philadelphia Inquirer", "A repulsive movie, marred by grotesquely hammy acting and inscrutable presentation by Brian De Palma... This "typical" group of soldiers contains at least two sociopaths whose short fuses are activated by booze, pornography and violence. I found these characterizations to be nonsensical...Here, though, Redacted implies that atrocities occur with the tacit or overt support of the American people. If that were true, maybe the scene wouldn't seem so ridiculous. "Variety" dismissed the film by stating, "Deeply felt but dramatically unconvincing "fictional documentary" — inspired by the March 2006 rape and killings by U.S. troops in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad — has almost nothing new to say about the Iraq situation Phillip Martin in the "Arkansas Democrat-Gazette" called the film "clumsy, heavy-handed and sullenly self-congratulatory", and denounced the film as "this utterly surreal - and phony - picture show as obscene. It's a war crime of a petty order". Owen Gleiberman wrote in "Entertainment Weekly", "why is Redacted such an excruciating experience? Because what happens within those formats is too fake to believe. The soldiers don’t sound like soldiers", and concluded that the film was "so naive it's an embarrassment." Joe Morgenstern wrote in "The Wall Street Journal", "The Americans are portrayed with varying degrees of loathsomeness, but there's not much variety in the film. It's all an awful aberration." Kenneth Turan wrote in "The Los Angeles Times", "By any rational standard, this film is kind of a mess. Even if you agree with its politics, you will probably weep at the ineptitude of it all." Tim Ronbbey's review in "The Telegraph" wrote, "Whatever your sympathy for its politics, it really is a monstrously bad film on every level."