The story of Algerian rebels during the colonization of Algeria by France

Rating: 9/10 (15 December 2011)

After watching this brilliantly filmed movie you can understand why filmmakers such as Spike Lee and Oliver Stone were influenced by it. Although Spike Lee's "Do The Right Thing" and Oliver Stone's "Salvador" are not about colonization, the human conditions and issues that "The Battle Of Algiers" addresses is relevant enough to inspire filmmakers who want to make a movie about human oppression, which exists in many different forms. The way in which Pontecorvo utilizes his skills and cinematic elements available to him to address not a single protagonist, but tell the story from multiple perspectives is one of the reasons I believe this film is successful. The film is able to effectively illustrate the socio-economical problems of colonization and is not biased in faulting either side. The fact that the movie did not fall into the traps that previous movies about colonization had is also something to be praised. The colonizers were not seen as single dimensional killing machines, but rather people with sense and a consciousness as we see in Col. Mathieu. The film also shines a light on terrorism showing the reason, thought, and purpose behind public bombings. The film justifies the realist genre it falls under, and it is hard to believe that every scene was completely staged and scripted instead of documented. It is hard to watch this film and not be left with compelling thoughts or lingering emotions, which, in my opinion, should be the goal of every good filmmaker.