Outside the Law (Hors-la-loi) opens with not one, but two prologues. First, in 1925, an Algerian family is evicted from their ancestral home by French colonialists. Then, in 1945, the same family is involved when French troops open fire on Algerians marching for independence, killing, among many others, the father. The main action begins in 1954 as we follow three brothers — the intellectual revolutionary, the soldier turned enforcer, and the hustler, as they settle into a new life with their mother in a slum outside Paris. Like The Battle of Algiers, Outside the Law tells the story of the Algerian struggle for independence from the Algerian point of view. Of course we root for the three brothers in their battle for a righteous cause, but this isn’t just good guys versus bad guys. The revolutionaries don’t hesitate to kill people who don’t deserve to die, and we even get to see the point-of-view of police fighting the Algerians. Riot police had to be brought out when Outside the Law opened at the Cannes Film Festival because of demonstrations by right-wing activists and French veterans of the Algerian War. The protests centered on the film’s portrayal of the 1945 massacre. For all the controversy surrounding Outside the Law, it’s really an action movie, and action movie fans will enjoy it whether they care about the politics or not.
