Review: Outside the Law (15)****

Less a sprawling epic than an intense character study of one ordinary family, Outside the Law (aka Hors-la-loi) is another reminder as to why European cinema continues to trounce its American rival.

This is drama on a grand scale, writ large in unapologetically subjective style and with a feel for its subject matter that comes straight from the heart. Once again writer/director Rachid Bouchareb takes the cause of Algeria as his muse. Once again he draws on his repertory of actors to breathe life into the story. Once again he delivers on every level.

Sami Bouajila, Roschdy Zem and Jamel Debbouze are the three very different brothers who, evicted as children from their homeland in the 1920s by the French, eventually join together as part of the underground Algerian resistance in 1950s Paris.

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Abdelkader (Bouajila) emerges from a lengthy jail term as a firebrand idealist committed to achieving independence for Algeria. Messaoud has fought for the French in Indochina but returns home and reluctantly becomes his brother’s muscle. Saïd (Debbouze) immerses himself in shady dealings – as a pimp, a club owner and a boxing promoter – but never turns his back on his siblings. And as the struggle intensifies – agitation becomes assassination – the brothers find themselves trapped in a deadly cul-de-sac of their own creation.

Outside the Law demands that the brothers and their kind be accepted as patriots, not fanatics. But as thoughts of revolution become an armed struggle with an escalation of violence on both sides – the French opt for a shoot-to-kill policy, fighting terror with terror – it is hard to see how the war can be won.

A compelling political drama with moments of pulse-pounding action, Outside the Law is a terrific ensemble thriller that examines the cause of freedom whilst looking to the internal divisions in a peasant family wronged by the state.

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