Author: Jamel Debbouze

Format: NTSC

Release Date: 02-08-2011

Details: Product description After losing their family home in Algeria, three brothers and their mother are scattered across the globe. Messaoud joins the French army fighting in Indochina; Abdelkader becomes a leader of the Algerian independence movement in France and Saïd moves to Paris to make his fortune in the shady clubs and boxing halls of Pigalle. Gradually, their interconnecting destinies reunite them in the French capital, where freedom is a battle to be fought and won. Amazon.ca The success of Rachid Bouchareb's 2006 film Days of Glory, a potent account of Algerians fighting in the French military during World War II, led to a follow-up film for Bouchareb and key members of his cast. Not a sequel: Outside the Law may employ three charismatic actors from the previous film, but they play variations on their characters from Days of Glory. After a 1920s prologue that establishes the utter brutality of the French occupation of Algeria, as officials confiscate a family's ancestral land, the movie skips ahead to follow the fortunes of the three sons of the dispossessed family. Saïd (Jamel Debbouze), after a bold act of defiance in his Algerian home, opts to move his mother to Paris in the 1950s and enter the capitalist world as a club owner and boxing promoter. Abdelkader (Sami Bouajila) becomes radicalized while in prison, and upon his release begins to organize in Paris on behalf of the FLN, the resistance movement supporting Algerian independence. Their soldier brother Messaoud (Roschdy Zem), just returned from fighting in France's doomed effort to retain its colonial hold on Indochina, has seen first-hand how indigenous people can outlast their occupiers through sheer determination and well-placed guerilla action. All the makings of an epic are here, including the inevitable soul-searching that accompanies the use of violence in service to a cause: while the French are clearly the villains when it comes to being on the wrong side of history, Bouchareb includes the kind of cold-blooded tactics from the FLN that muddy the simple setup of good guys vs. bad guys. Much of Outside the Law is straightforward rather than subtle, although the movie looks incredible. Bouchareb gets a steady pulse going, but dividing the film between his three characters means we don't dig deep into any one of them--the saga cries out for the length of a miniseries along the lines of Carlos. Still, what's here is plenty compelling, in its bare-knuckles way. --Robert Horton

UPC: 778854183094

EAN: 0778854183094

Languages: English

Binding: DVD

Item Condition: New