At the very beginning of the new film Outside the Law (French title, Hors la Loi), we see a humble peasant working the soil of a modest farm in rural Algeria. The land is little better than desert, but it is the beloved ancestral home of a small family: a mother, a father, and three small boys. A bit later we see an imposing person, some sort of magistrate with muscle backing him up, telling this family that they must soon leave their home because it now belongs to a colonialist from France. The year is 1925, and the seeds of rebellion have been planted.
The three small boys (Saïd, Messaoud, and Abdelkader) grow up, and their story is picked up on May 8, 1945. We are shown scenes of the V-E Day celebration in Paris juxtaposed with a protest rally in the boys' hometown in Algeria on the very same day. As the native Algerians march, shouting slogans demanding freedom and equal rights, French troops mercilessly shoot them down. We tend to forget how the French sank to gestapo tactics when trying to suppress the Algerians' struggle for independence. On the very same day that French citizens in Paris were celebrating their liberation from the Nazis, French colonialists in Algeria were showing that they weren't much better than the hated Germans. The boys survive the Sétif Massacre at which 6,000 Algerians were slaughtered, but their father does not.
Messaoud eventually winds up serving in the French army, fighting the Vietnamese in Indochina; Abdelkader gets tossed into prison for his anti-French political views; and Saïd becomes, of all things, a prizefight promoter. When the brothers are at last reunited with their mother, we find them in a shanty town on the outskirts of Paris. Abdelkader had been further radicalized in prison, and is now passionate about Algerian independence. He recruits his brothers into the cause, and they all decide, after some bickering, to bring the Algerian War to France by stirring up revolutionary fervor among their fellow expatriate Algerians, most of whom have been reduced to little more than slaves working in a nearby Renault plant.
Factional violence ensues, as do conflicts among the brothers themselves. How much of their personal lives should they sacrifice for the cause? How many other lives are they willing to put in danger? How many people are they prepared to kill with their own hands? Are they willing to "lose their souls" by becoming callous insurgents? As always, one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist, and too often the line becomes blurred in everyone's vision.
In one scene, the head of the French task force dealing with the Algerians says that the only way for the police to deal with terrorists is to become terrorists themselves. There are many scenes with submachine guns being fired by both sides. It's like Eliot Ness vs. the Chicago bootleggers. And I think that is the point the filmmakers are trying to make. Neither political activism nor law enforcement should descend into criminality, especially not violent criminality.
This film is a clever, well-balanced hybrid: part political thriller, part historical polemic, and part gangster movie. Director Rachid Bouchareb is obviously a fan and a student of American crime flicks. There are several tableaux in Outside the Law that you will immediately recognize as distinctly reminiscent of iconic scenes from The Godfather and Goodfellas. I cannot make up my mind whether these cinematic references diminish or enhance the overall superb quality of this film. I suppose that determination should be made by each individual viewer.
I've been told that Outside the Law is the movie that Algeria has chosen to submit to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for consideration as an Oscar candidate for Best Foreign Language Film. I hope it is picked by the Hollywood bigwigs because it deserves a wide audience.