Blueprint For the United States Future?

Rating: 9/10 (23 February 2007)

Usually, films in foreign language with sub-titles are not something I'd watch. I am sure glad I watched this one. The film is based upon a true story.
The story is of the French trying to hold on to their colony in Algeria in the late 1950's & early 1960's. The French keep trying the entire film to stomp out resistance in Algeria. It had been their colony for 130 years.
Once the seed of independence is planted, no matter what the French do, their cost in troops & civilian deaths & destruction keep getting higher & higher. Considering the French have already paid a heavy price in Vietnam during this same period of history, you can understand in the end why they lost this one later. The French finally consider the cost of fighting this Algerian Independence movement too high.
The scenes of torture in the film are so realistic & the scenes of violence & riots in the streets are so real, that you think the film makers were using real news reel footage in this film. It is amazingly, all staged.
A lot of the parallel issues are here with our current dilemmas with Iraq, Afghanistan, & Kosovo. We are considering that these costs are too high to bear in our media. The mistake here is that the reasons are different. It is our medias hate of the current President that is fueling this hate. We are not attempting to make colonies here like the French were in Algiers.
Still, this film does bring us into some interesting parallel issues. It is well worth viewing & an extremely well made film.