Reduced and Removed

The Austin Comicle published a review for Brian De Palma's epic bomb Redacted this past week. Apparently, this was its opening weekend in Austin. As expected, the Comicle gave it as positive a review as possible, given what it was - a poorly-written, poorly-produced piece of agitprop for the Blame America First crowd. Three out of five stars. 

I checked to see where it was playing and saw something I hadn't seen before. Redacted was playing at one theater - and only six showings over three days. That's it. I guess even the Alamo Drafthouse has a limit on how much money it was willing to lose in showing this film, even in the People's Republic of Austin, by not giving it anything near a full run.

So now I thought I would check back at Box Office Mojo to see how much money it took in. I don't know how they determine gross receipts, but Redacted was not listed at all for the weekend of January 4. By comparison, the last movie listed for that weekend was something called King Corn, which played at one theater and took in $75.

So either Redacted wasn't tracked for the weekend, or it took in less than $75 (which at $8.25 per ticket means less than nine viewers for the entire weekend). It's possible it wasn't tracked, but other older films (such as the similarly-themed In The Valley Of Elah, 2 screens, $158 gross) were.

So it would appear that, even in Austin, shit like Redacted can't draw flies.