Outside The Law

Rachid Bouchareb's film about the Algerian struggle for independence for France in the aftermath of World War II is a kind of thematic companion to his 2006 film Days Of Glory, about Algerian soldiers who fought for France in that war.

It gets off to a disconcertingly heavy-handed start with a brief scene-setting depiction of a dirt-poor Algerian farmer and his family being thrown off their ancestral dust-bowl in the mid-1920s, then rapidly moves forward 20 years to a massacre in May, 1945 when the same farmer is killed along with his daughter in the violent suppression of a pro-independence march in Algeria. His sons Saïd (Jamel Debbouze) and Abdelkader (Sami Bouajila) survive. Saïd is a self-interested hustler, Abdelkader a committed independence fighter whilst a third son, Messaoud (Roschdy Zem) is a soldier in the French army. We then jump forward  to 1953. Messaoud is in Indo-China where he learns about the struggle for independence from the Vietnamese, Abdelkader is in jail in France serving time for his political activities and Saïd is a petty hoodlum in the Pigalle district of Paris.

We can see where all this is heading and Bouchareb takes too much time in getting there but once the brothers are united and we start the story of their involvement in the activities of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) on French soil, the film kicks into the kind of action/crime genre stylings that recall Olivier Assayas' 2010 film, Carlos.

Fortunately Bouchareb did not have the obligation to portray his protagonists decline into irrelevancy. What it loses as history it gains in gangster chic with Bouchareb handling the genre elements with relish. No doubt however it was the film’s epic historical sweep rather than the latter which earned it a Best Foreign Film nomination at the 2010 Oscars. Nothwithstanding Bouchareb’s sure directorial hand and the strong performances, the combination of historical tract and crime family saga is too unwieldy to satisfy fans of either stripe and this is not a film that is likely to win a strong following.

DVD Extras: Making of Outside The Law; Interview with the director; Theatrical trailer.

Available from: Madman

 

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