Outside the Law (***)

Three Algerian brothers (Jamel Debbouze, Roschdy Zem and Sami Bouajila) emigrate to France but get caught up in their native country’s fight for independence. Though the story begins with colonization in 1925, the bulk of the film takes place between 1956, after France’s defeat in Vietnam, and 1962, when Algeria became independent.

Writer-director Rachid Bouchared previously made a film called Days of Glory that followed North African soldiers who join the French Resistance. (The film starred all three of this film’s stars as characters with the same names as here, yet this is not a sequel.) Pointedly, one brother, talking with a French police officer, tells him that while during World War II he was a resistance fighter, now he is on the wrong side of justice.

Though it weaves in questions about whether terrorism is acceptable in fighting for a just cause, in other ways the movie is the functional equivalent of a gangster film. Certainly, the violence to punish traitors is similar. The eldest brother is something like a solemn Malcolm X figure, eschewing alcohol and tobacco so as to avoid paying taxes to the hated French government, and women because, well, there’s no time. The youngest is the one who just wants to make money and disappoints his mother by becoming a bandit. The middle brother joins his brother in the movement, but regrets not seeing his wife and child, and has qualms about killing.

Nothing about how this Oscar nominee (foreign-language film) plays out should surprise, whether you know about French colonialism or not. Still, the brutality employed by the seat of Enlightenment culture is somehow shocking, though it shouldn’t be.

IMDB link

viewed at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 2/22/11