"...it's hard enough to start a revolution, even harder to sustain it, and hardest of all to win it."

Rating: 8/10 (19 November 2017)

Once you become absorbed in this film, there are times when you accept it almost as a documentary. Having no knowledge of this aspect of history, I thought the picture did a good job of setting the table regarding the French-Algerian conflict with a roughly decade long running history of violence and terrorism involved on both sides. What seemed overwhelming was the amount of destruction. Though obviously staged for the film, it looked like the events were real and lent a surreal quality to one's viewing. More than anything, one can't help feeling that what we see in the world today in the Middle East or in terrorist affected locations around the world, that there's nothing new about war and conflict. Violence sparks retaliation in a never ending cycle while the ideologies that drive that violence is never compromised by opposing forces. It doesn't make for a lot of hopefulness for the human condition.