Days of Glory (Indigenes) Reviews
Top CriticInstead of guys named Danny and Polack and Sol and Brooklyn, you've got guys named Said and Yassir and Messaoud and Abdelkader. But it's the same deal. Prick them, do they not bleed? Blow them up, do their limbs not scatter and their guts not spill?
Bouchareb shows a real talent for action sequences.
A solidly-constructed window onto an era and a culture clash many Americans never knew existed.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
A shattering tale of bravery and unrewarded loyalty.
| Original Score: A-
It's to the credit of the actors, and Algerian-born director Rachid Bouchareb, that we become emotionally involved with the soldiers and the injustices they are forced to endure.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Days of Glory may lack a certain complexity, but then courage under fire from all sides -- be it the enemy's weapons or your own country's disgusting bigotry -- is a pretty straightforward proposition. The plain facts are more than enough.
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| Original Score: B
Rachid Bouchareb's stirring war movie does for the North Africans what Ousmane Sembene and Thierno Faty Sow's Camp Thiaroye did for the Senegalese: it acknowledges the important role they played fighting alongside the French in World War II.
Rarely does a movie's title prove as bitterly ironic as Days of Glory.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
It's a war movie burning with discontent, a moving reminder of the sacrifices that Algerian Muslim infantrymen made for a motherland that treated them abominably.
| Original Score: 3/4
The movie is more about what happens between the battles than during them. It's the plight of the men, fighting for an army that considers them second-class citizens, that raises Days of Glory above your average war movie.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
[Rachid] Bouchareb's movie combines convention with insight in a manner that may prevent it from being a great film but probably helped clinch it as a productive one.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
The deluge of World War II movies presents a challenge to Days of Glory, one it can only partially overcome. Very little about it is new.
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| Original Score: 2/4
In recounting this conflicted tale, director Rachid Bouchareb displays some valour of his own, resisting what must have been a strong temptation to deal in aggrieved agitprop, and instead confining his attentions to a small group of indigenous soldiers.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Rachid Bouchareb's Days of Glory, is a movingly acted, terrifically old-fashioned World War II picture rethought as a post-colonial rebuke.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
It could be a better movie. But it certainly convinces you of the nobility of the souls of the men whose boots were on the ground and whose bodies went into that same ground.
Few [war movies] are as moving as Days, but even so, this film doesn't romanticize. It's hard, clear, full of empathy for its characters and lucid in its insight into their plight.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
It isn't often a movie has the power to force a country to do the right thing.
Algeria's pick in the Oscar race for Best Foreign-Language film is a wounding indictment of discrimination in the trenches.
| Original Score: 3.5/4
I've never seen a picture quite like Days of Glory, which not only illuminates a forgotten patch of history, but also broadens and enriches the idea of what it means to be both a patriot, in the best sense of the word, and a citizen of the world.
Just when you think you've viewed World War II from every conceivable angle, a picture like Days of Glory comes along and expands your range of vision with a stirring sense of urgency.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
The First French Army, composed mostly of 130,000 North Africans, were referred to contemptuously by the French as indigènes -- natives. Their bravery in wartime has never, until now, been adequately described in a movie.
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| Original Score: B
Days of Glory has received a rapturous reception in France, where it has struck a historical nerve with its belated recognition of the sacrifices of 130,000 North African colonial soldiers.
The story Bouchareb tells is something no classic has tackled before -- that of patriots fighting for a homeland that didn't treat them with égalité.
Full Review
| Original Score: A
Bouchareb nobly honors men whose sacrifices have largely gone unnoticed.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
... a film that is feelingly made and steeped in the strongest emotions.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Days of Glory has good intentions and a well-executed combat scene, but it could do with more originality.
| Original Score: 2/4
Algeria's official Oscar submission for best foreign language film is a damn good war movie.
| Original Score: 4/5
Days of Gory makes no departures from previous war films, but the tensions between the French commanders and the indigenous troops -- and the conflicts among themselves over how best to respond to provocations -- gives the film its dramatic punch.
Big budgeted ($16 million) multi-national production downplays its epic scale with a nicely-tuned ensemble that concentrates on personalities rather than battles, highlighting the contribution these men made despite treatment as second-class soldiers.
