OVP: Outside the Law (2010)

Film: Outside the Law (2010)
Stars: Jamel Debbouze, Roschdy Zem, Sami Bouajila, Chafia Boudraa, Bernard Blancan
Director: Rachid Boucherab
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Foreign Language Film-Algeria)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

I will claim a bit of unfortunate ingorance on the front of this film, at least its historical context.  Though I did take some post-War history in college, most of my knowledge of Algeria's struggle for independence is fuzzy at best and completely absent at worst (and to be honest, it's more the latter).  Therefore, I do not have the background to discuss whether or not this film accurately portrays France's actions toward Algeria during the 1950's as the territory struggled to become a country of its own.  I can only comment about the quality of the film that Boucherab put before me, the fourth of the five nominees that I have seen from the 2010 Best Foreign Language Film race.

The film tells the tale of three brothers, all of whom were, as children, kicked out of their home of leisure and forced to the streets and homelessness.  We don't get to see too much of their struggle through adolescence, as the film cuts directly from their (unjust) evicition to the riots of the Setif massacre, when the brothers' father is killed during the gunfire, and they all are deeply affected by his death and the events of the day.

Each brother starts the film in a very different place than he began it, and in a way, it almost seems to be borrowing a bit from The Godfather (in the way that any film with three brothers dealing with organized crime must be borrowing something from The Godfather).  You have the hotheaded lug Sonny, in this case Messaoud (Zem), who has just come home from war (it sounds like that means he should be Michael, but there's little doubt that he's Sonny as the film progresses).  Michael, on the other hand, is incarnated in the bookish Abdelkader (Bouajila), who takes the Algerian independence cause most to heart, and is willing to sacrifice people's lives, without much of a thought, in order to reach his independence.  You wouldn't guess this was the direction the man would take as the film began, what with his even-tempered intellectualism, and his strong strength in his mother (well-played by Boudraa, as a woman who is both morally upright and clearly revels a bit in her sons' ascendance, even if she turns a blind eye to how he gets there).

The third son, the Fredo, is of course the weakest of the three, but not in the same way that John Cazale's brilliant middle child is.  Here, Said (Debbouze) is less a cowardly man who betrays the family and more a man who shadily (first prostitution, then a more legitimate run as boxing promoter) gains his fame and fortune, despite the protests of his brothers, who are consistently trying to tear him down.  The dynamic between the three is the best part of the film-the interworkings of these three actors and their competitive, back-stabbing, but still deeply loving relationships is fascinating to watch.  Sibling chemistry is something that sometimes gets neglected in a film (or is portrayed unrealistically), and I love the way that they can go years without speaking, perhaps even hating each other, but when one is in trouble, the other two abandon whatever loyalties they have outside the family and run across the world to save their brother.  That's the sort of crazily loyal bond that only exists from one sibling to another.

The film stretches for way too long, and while it seems intent on giving a complete overview of the entire movement through the eyes of three brothers, it gets repatitive after a while, and you start to wonder why there isn't more time to stop and smell the roses-it seems impossible that these men focused on nothing else but the revolution for seventeen years, and this lack of growth amongst the characters and their ambitions (with the exception of Said), hurts the narrative.

The film competed for Best Foreign Language Film, and though I am not going to compare it to the other films (we're not far off from the 2010 OVP writeups and I don't want to ruin the surprise, and quite frankly, I'm still debating my ranking), I will say that Boucherab is on an impressive streak.  He has landed three Best Foreign Language Film nominations (comprising 60% of Algeria's total citations in this category), and is not a director that I'll underestimate for a nomination in the future.  However, I will say that if the other two films are of the same caliber, I am in for some very handsome and compelling, but overall uninspiring movies.