Outside the Law (2010) on Netflix
When the family loses its home in Algeria, three brothers scatter: Messaoud joins the French army in Indochina, Abdelkader takes up the independence cause, and Saïd seeks his fortune in Paris.
- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb6.6/104,287 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes76%
Trailer
Plot summary
Messaoud, Abdelkader and Saïd lost the family home in Algeria years before, and the three went separate ways: Messaoud into the French army in Indochina, Abdelkader into prison and then politics, Saïd into the nightclubs and boxing gyms of Pigalle. In the mid-1950s they meet again in France, where Abdelkader has become a leader of the Front de Libération Nationale. He presses Messaoud, home from the war, to join the armed fight for Algerian independence, and Messaoud agrees. Saïd keeps his distance, running his nightclub and training boxers; he wants nothing to do with the movement, and the disagreement divides the brothers while the police watch Abdelkader and his comrades closely.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Outside the Law (2010)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Before it had even premiered, Outside the Law drew political controversy and nationalist criticism in France; Lionnel Luca, a member of the National Assembly for the UMP, asked the Defence Historical Service to review the project as soon as he heard about it.
- France's Defence Historical Service concluded that the film's "errors and anachronisms" were so many and so gross that any historian could identify them, and that the scenario had not been preceded by a serious historical study.
- Outside the Law was submitted by Algeria and became one of the five nominees for Best Foreign Language Film at the 83rd Academy Awards, the third time a film directed by Rachid Bouchareb had been nominated in the category, after Dust of Life in 1996 and Days of Glory in 2007.
- About 90% of Outside the Law was shot in a studio, even though the production also worked in Paris, Algeria, Tunisia, the Belgian cities Charleroi and Brussels, Germany and the United States, with scenes set at the United Nations Headquarters.
- Rachid Bouchareb has said the film grew out of the interviews he did for Days of Glory: the people he talked to also told him what happened after the war, which is how he came to write Outside the Law.
