Politically, tactically, socially astute. Also, a thrilling movie.

Rating: 10/10 (20 May 2003)

Most war movies are peopled by overgrown children, or technicians, or cartoon heroes and villains. "The Battle of Algiers" is nearly alone in its fully believable depiction of adults at a particular time and place being molded by wartime experience. Only "Band of Brothers," in my opinion and to my knowledge, is worthy of comparison. In the other direction, the formulaic leftism and phony pretensions to knowingness in Pontecorvo's "Queimada" result, I guess, from its subservience to the director's thoughts rather than close contact with real events.
"Algiers" is a more complete film than "Brothers," showing the battle, if not the entire war, from inception to results, from the perspectives of the all the main combatants and bystanders. This is possible because the historical conflict was more circumscribed, and, despite its documentary feel, because "Algiers" has more fictionalization, such as combining several real people into one character and inventing others. Nevertheless, and with the provisos that there are honest debates and I am no expert, fundamental strategy and character have not been essentially falsified.
The movie opens near the end of the battle, with a chillingly unexaggerated torture of a FLN rebel by the French army, and then proceeds to the beginning. "Algiers" shows a city that is largely either French and bourgeois, or Moslem and proletarian. Not comfortably so. The French have a professional army, but are in a demographically precarious position. Among the Moslems, socialism and secularism are in the air a bit. Most people fear being caught on the losing side, and try to wait and see. Consequentially, small numbers can tip the balance of power. Terrorism and threat of later reprisal are used to force people off or onto the fence. The rationale for the French strategy of policing and torture is also carefully laid out.
"Algiers" has a neither sentimentalized nor over-cynical understanding of human nature, and is very good at bringing alive the vagaries of charisma and public moods. At stake are lives, and ideology, and religion. The characters have thought hard about what is achievable, and what they are willing to sacrifice to win or survive. Appalling as are torture and random slaughter of innocents, by the end we have seen enough through the eyes of both sides to grasp how they came about.
In the closing scene, the FLN's loss of the battle is juxtaposed with its later winning of the war in a way that suggests that France's loss was the logical result of France's brutality. But the intervening period is not depicted, and, to the movie's credit, causation is not clearer than in life. With hindsight, which includes the knowledge that the FLN's current extremely brutal war against an Islamist rebellion has worked, we can see that effectiveness of tactics depends on many details. Even though we know the history, the movie's tension is genuine because the outcome was not preordained.