Outside the Law

Set against the increasing demands for Algerian independence at home, three brothers are living in 1950s France. "Saïd" (Jamel Debbouze) is making a decent living running a nightclub but his siblings are much less settled. "Abdelkader" (Sami Bouajila) is a member of a proscribed organisation using terrorist tactics to free their homeland, and he is determined to recruit former soldier "Messaoud" (Roschdy Zem) and "Saïd" to the cause. The latter isn't really interested, but with the police closing in on the family and his nightclub shut down, he now has some tough decisions to make. There's something of the terrorist being another man's freedom fighter adage to this story and it's essentially asking the question of an audience. What wouldn't we do for freedom? The brothers have fled Algeria to escape the purported brutality of their oppressive colonialists, but now in France they are visiting a similar threatening behaviour on innocents there. Two wrongs make a right? Were the police there to protect or to impose? All questions asked but sadly not really very well addressed. The acting is weak, the characters seriously undercooked and the writing (historically based or not) struggles to sell us these three men one way or the other. This had a chance to enhance the standard documentary look of a depiction of the justice and causes of revolution but instead it rather leaves it to us, and any knowledge of events we may have, to reach our own conclusions. Disappointing, I'd say.