Fantastic!

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

A really well made and fascinating film about the beginning of the big anti-imperialist war that took place Algeria against France. A conflict which would be incredibly contentious war in France, especially in regard to torture of enemy militants. This film is really well done about what is essentially a terrorist group in Algiers fighting for their freedom against their French oppressors. While I think this group is largely sympathetic they also commit some fairly grotesque acts towards French people living in Algiers. In terms of filmmaking this makes the dynamic between the French forces and insurgent group very interesting.

When director Gillo Pontecorvo had presented "The Battle of Algiers" at the Venice Film Festival in 1966, it must have been ignition's motion for guerrilla independent cinema. A film shot for 800,000.00 U.S. Dollars, mainly on location for the exteriors plus translating the gritty urban sights of previous revolution city of Algiers in the 1950s towards the staged interiors scenes that the film translates to screen as fluent piece of art.The cast does not have any particular protagonists. It follows loosely the life's journey of character Ali La Pointe, who builds on underground organization within Algiers' city center with a few other to perform precise terror acts against the French occupation of the north-African coast city until Colonel Mathieu, intriguingly performed by actor Jean Martin arrives to smoke the rebels out. Jean Martin's performance as military leader has clearly be Stephen Lang's inspiration for Colonel Quatrich in James Cameron's 2009er Science-fiction-movie "Avatar".All cast stands back behind the political dynamite theme behind "The Battle of Algiers", which undoubtedly gives the spectator parallel to recent world history with social revolution in Tunisia and Egypt 2011. Director Pontecorvo researched in detail to bring his vision of social dynamics towards occupied soil by colonialist's state policy. The film has nothing left of its intellectual power after 50 years and can be watched as educational motion picture for 20th century international history without missing out on universal themes as the human right to fulfill individual needs in an globalized world.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend

From the title I expected this to be a war movie, but I did not realize Algiers is a city, and the battle is actually a struggle for Algerians to live in their home country without fear of the French who are suppressing them.I've seen very critically acclaimed classic foreign films before, so I guess I might have had my expectations too high. For example, two of my favorite foreign films are "Bicycle Thieves" and "Rashomon," but those films actually do interesting things with their camera-work. With The Battle of Algiers we just get a lot of standard (boring) camera-work with a lot of static shots to focus on conversations about the action rather than focusing on the action itself.The best aspect of the film is the characters who are a part of the rebellion and their motivations. We are introduced to one of the main characters in a very interesting way - this secret group of rebels does an initiation on Ali by checking to see if he would be loyal enough to shoot a cop, but they don't tell him this. We can see the manipulation this group exercises, though in their eyes it is necessary recruitment, and we should see it as this too since it is the Algerians who are the victim to French occupation of the city of Algiers as well as of the entire nation of Algeria.With the filmmakers choosing to revisit a scene from different view points there is obviously non-linear chronology, but I only understood this at the beginning and towards the end of the film. I was confused how the scene fit into the scenes surrounding it when it was shown for the second time in the film. I will have to rewatch this film some time in the future - after all it is regarded as one of the most important films ever made.I think I enjoyed the conclusion of this film much more than any part which preceded it, and that's because the conclusion is the most inspirational sequence of the entire movie. It is uplifting to see how Algerians rise up again years after the first rebellion group is decapitated (a metaphor you will understand if you watch the film), and this happens without great explanation. The message implied by the film is that this first group of rebels may not have been successful, but the group inspired the people of its nation to stand strong for justice.

As Algerian, I watched this movie 2 times a year for 20 years, this movie is a part of my story. It helped me to put imagines and sounds to stories I heard from my teachers, cousins, as my grand-parents and my parents still can't talk about that horrible war.By now, as I'm growing old, I understand that this movie is not the 'Truth', it was 'war', and in a war even good people can do horrible things. And I know what I'm talking about as I was there, in Algeria, during the 'Dark Decennial', while we were fighting against our own people whom turned terrorists in the name of Islam.So for those who will watch this film, please just remember not to judge any of the parties : Algerian /or/ French. It was a war and no war is nice, people die, and those who survive will suffer. Films/art are a form of exorcism for that pain we keep silently inside.I like this movie, because I saw tears in the beautiful green eyes of my grand mother every time she watched it and it always gave her a good opportunity to cry for my grand father that she lost during the war. I saw my father crying for his father that he never knew, and saw him also being closer to his mom because. For me, this movie will always be a 'Good movie to watch in Family'