Days of Glory (Indigenes)

[KLAXXON]

1943. They had never set foot on French soil, but France was at war, four young Algerian men enlisted in the French army along with 130,000 other 'indigenous soldiers' to liberate France from the Nazi enemy.

DAYS OF GLORY tells their story ... the story of these forgotten heroes, the injustices they faced and the discrimination they have encountered.

After seeing this film, French President Jacques Chirac agreed to restore vetrans' pensions to the North Africans who fought alongside French troops during the war.

A movie can make a difference...












In 1943, 130,000 North African men volunteer to help free France from Nazi occupation. Among them are Saïd (Debbouze), Abdelkader (Bouajila), Messaoud (Zem) and Yassir (Naceri), whose destinies are entwined as they fight from Italy to Alsace.






We’ve become too used to our race-related tales of historical injustice coming packaged by Hollywood with a fat white ribbon wrapped around them. You just know that if Ed Zwick had made Days Of Glory (called Indigènes, or ’natives’ in France), he’d have set the Caucasian corporal dead centre, where he could earn the grudging respect of his North African troops as they march towards their unsung doom. As it is, the corporal in question is a pale blur on the sidelines in Rachid Bouchareb’s vision of a war fought passionately by men you wouldn’t blame for caring little about their colonial masters.
 
Hardly surprising, given Bouchareb’s French-Algerian roots, but refreshing nonetheless. In a manner reminiscent of Sam Fuller’s critical The Big Red One, the film zones in on a small core of characters and turns them from green recruits to weary, hardened warriors through a punchy, episodic structure, as they trudge north to liberate a homeland they’ve never even seen.
 
Bouchareb doesn’t scrape deep enough to reveal precisely what compels sullen, illiterate Algerian peasant boy Saïd (Jamel Debbouze, of Amélie and Angel-A fame) or the sensitive, erudite Abdelkader (Sami Bouajila, who resembles a North African Ethan Hawke) to take up arms. Leathery mountain man Yassir (Samy ‘Taxi’ Naceri) is clearly in it for the spoils; sharpshooter Messaoud (Roschdy Zem) arguably for the girls — but is that really all it is?
 
Come the tense finale, as the quartet endeavour to defend an ailing Alsatian village, the question ceases to nag. It’s not the why that’s important, it’s the actions of these men — which only intensifies your outrage that the colonial troops were so shabbily treated after the war’s end. It’s a shame Bouchareb feels he needs a modern-day postscript to ram the point home, but we can forgive him that. After all, Days Of Glory is a truly excellent war picture. Bouchareb portrays battle as a series of dull, bloody and almost inevitably fatal thuds rather than pyrotechnic spectacle, and this admirable earthiness ensures the film remains awfully gripping without ever tumbling into Boy’s Own territory.



A war film more of sober, grim reflection than balls-out escapades. Yet it grips consistently, its bursts of combat delivering gut-punches of veracity.









Jamel Debbouze ...  Saïd Otmari
Samy Naceri ...  Yassir
Roschdy Zem ...  Messaoud Souni
Sami Bouajila ...  Abdelkader
Bernard Blancan ...  Sergent Roger Martinez
Mathieu Simonet ...  Caporal Leroux
Assaad Bouab ...  Larbi
Benoît Giros ...  Capitaine Durieux
Mélanie Laurent ...  Margueritte village Vosges
Antoine Chappey ...  Le colonel
Aurélie Eltvedt ...  Irène
Thomas Langmann ...  Le journaliste
Thibault de Montalembert ...  Capitaine Martin
Dioucounda Koma ...  Touré (as Diouc Koma)
Philippe Beglia ...  Rambert



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