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CHICAGO – Excelsior! Comic book legend Stan Lee’s famous exclamation puts a fine point on the third and final play of Mark Pracht’s FOUR COLOR TRILOGY, “The House of Ideas,” presented by and staged at City Lit Theater in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood. For tickets/details, click HOUSE OF IDEAS.
Film Review: Oscar-Nominated ‘Outside the Law’ Makes Revolution Personal
Submitted by BrianTT on March 25, 2011 - 12:09pm
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Continue reading for Brian Tallerico’s full “Outside the Law” review.
“Outside the Law” stars Jamel Debbouze, Roschdy Zem, and Sami Bouajila. It was written by Olivier Lorelle and Rachid Bouchareb and directed by Bouchareb. It is not rated and runs 138 minutes. It opened in Chicago at the Music Box on March 25th, 2011.
Outside the Law
Photo credit: Cohen Media Group
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 Rating: 3.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – Rachid Bouchareb’s “Outside the Law” paints a vivid family portrait of a trio of brothers at the forefront of a violent, impassioned time in France as the country was trying to stop a revolution in Algeria and dealing with the violence that brought to their home country. With a story that spans decades, “Outside the Law” is sometimes a bit too episodic and stuffed with history to register emotionally but the three central performances carry the piece overall.
Bouchareb and co-writer Olivier Lorelle try to tackle major events of an entire revolution while also defining three distinct characters — the film sometimes feels like a 700-page book distilled down to 138 minutes when it probably would have worked better at twice the length. There’s SO much story here that the characters often get lost in the details of history. It’s a film that’s more interesting than captivating as the revolution unfolds in very human costs.
| Read Brian Tallerico’s full review of “Outside the Law” in our reviews section. |
“Outside the Law” is definitely a political piece, so much so that the film sparked protests in its home country. The film centers on what it portrays as the French occupation of Algeria. After a scene in which the family at the center of the film have their land taken by colonialists, the movie truly opens with a brutal massacre during a march in Setif on the last day of WWII and ends with the country’s independence nearly two decades later.
The result of the massacre is to divide the three brothers — the peacemaker Said (the great Jamel Debbouze of “Angel A,” many more), the intellectual Abdelkader (Sami Bouajila), and the strong-and-silent Messaoud (Roschdy Zem). Said watches his father and sisters die and is left to take care of his mother and try and reunite his family after Abdelkader is arrested and Messaoud goes off to fight in Indochina. Years later, in Paris, the three men are free and together, but while Said sees opportunity in French life, including running a cabaret and managing a boxer, Abdelkader and Messaoud become leaders of the FLN resistance — Algerians in France who will go to any end to further their cause.
Continue reading for Brian Tallerico’s full “Outside the Law” review.Outside the Law
Photo credit: Cohen Media Group
