OUTSIDE THE LAW (Rachid Bouchareb). 138 minutes. Subtitled. Opens Friday (March 25). See listing. Rating: NN
In Outside The Law, writer/director Rachid Bouchareb returns to the moral and political territory he explored in 2006’s Oscar-nominated Days Of Glory, reuniting three of its stars, Jamel Debbouze, Roschdy Zem and Sami Bouajila.
In the earlier film, they played North African recruits battling prejudice as well as Nazis while fighting for France in the Second World War. Here, they’re a trio of brothers in postwar France who join the Front de Libération Nationale to fight for Algerian independence.
Bouchareb is firmly on the side of the Algerians, depicting the French as brutal, uncaring occupiers. Perhaps understandably, the movie’s early re-creation of a 1945 massacre in Sétif was a source of some discomfort at Cannes last year.
There’s a tense action sequence involving an escape from a police station, but most of Outside The Law is concerned with driving home how badly the French treated Algerians. Bouchareb’s grim tale is pitched exclusively to an audience that already agrees with him he makes no attempt to provide context or emotional stakes for viewers new to the story.
There’s little complexity to the characters, or weight to the politics. For that, watch The Battle Of Algiers, still brilliant – and still sadly relevant – after 45 years.
