I had forgotten how great this film was

Rating: Null/10 (14 February 2004)

The last time I saw this film was in college many, many years ago.
I had forgotten how great it was, from the magnificent Ennio Morricone soundtrack (that haunting Casbah theme is incredible) to the unsentimental characterizations. And as for characterizations I am certain the heroic Soviet Spetznaz commander in "Red Dawn" was a direct steal from Col. Mathieu.
The 60's Black Panthers should have seen this movie. Before taking on the French, the FLN first destroys the criminal underworld in the Casbah, the pimps and drug dealers and junkies. As a practical matter, these people are riddled with police informants and they must be destroyed/silenced. Ali La Pointe, who used to be a petty hustler, must kill his old friends. The Panthers talked big but had they moved first against the drug dealers, they would have built a real political base that would have made it harder to destroy them. And made it not quite so easy to infiltrate and destroy them.