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A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I would add some contextual points which may not be well known to non French audiences but are essential to fully understand this film and where it is coming from. Firstly, it is not a "WW2 film", it is a film about the Armée d'Afrique in WW2: the film structure follows the campaign history of the Army across Europe.If France was able to have a seat with the Big 4 at Berlin and UN Security Council, it rests on the shoulders of the Armée d'Afrique and its role in the Italy Campaign, Dragoon Landings of Provence, Liberation of France, and drive into Germany, and its soldiers which we see in this film - they gave France its place with the victorious allies, and were conveniently forgotten by a France seeking to forget the débacle of its discredited political leaders of 1940. Such soldiers also fought in WW1 (some can be seen on the Memorial Arch war monument in Constantine as alluded to by Saïd/Debbouze's mother), and in the Indochina War. Ergo, they were French, spilled their blood for France, but were denied their political rights (and full pensions), which is to France's shame. By accepting their service, France acknowledged their equality implicitly but could never bring itself to acknowledge it explicitly - a typical characteristic I might add.Indeed to this day, there is not only a fissure between the French and the "indigènes" of the movie - the Arab soldiers, but between the "mainland French" and the "overseas French" - the "Pieds Noirs" - Martinez of the movie. Pieds Noirs are present day rootless French that feel they were sold down the river when France let Algeria go, and who are still rancorous, as mainland French look down on them and their accents (upon arriving in Marseille in 1962, the Pieds Noirs were told get back on their boats and get out of town). This film speaks to all these implied elements, as the French officers look down at Martinez, with his immigrant name, neither French, nor Arab (they would know he was half Arab due to his "etat civil" which is a type of long form birth certificate and part of his Army Record). These are the present day right wing of France - hankering after a lost Algeria, never really at home in a France of cold weather and strange food, vocal and militant.As for the film, the ethnic music may be considered heavy handed but it is meant to illustrate the duality of the Army - a hybrid of two cultures that was threatening to become something new that eventually, both sides backed away from - a "rendezvous manqué", as the French would say - one of several in this long Franco-Algerian story which is not yet over and continues in an odd symbiotic post independence relationship that transcends the behaviour of petulant idiosyncratic individuals.Finally, regarding the controversy about rapes in Italy of this army, this should also be placed in the overall context of the conduct of victorious armies in War, episodic cases of excess in all armies too numerous and tiresome to mention, and which pales in comparison to the systematic behaviour of the Einsatzgruppen in the Eastern Front, SS at Oradour-Sur-Glane, or Wehrmacht executing 41 African POWs at Clamecy, France in 1940 for example. It behooved Fascist Axis Italy to point the finger of blame elsewhere by discrediting a multiracial victorious French Armée d'Afrique with racial atrocity stories - such proponents may wish to consider the behaviour of the Regio Exercito in Africa Orientale Italiana to give such matters fuller consideration.All in all this film tells a story which needed telling, and tells it competently in the two limited hours it has, but it helps to understand the context behind the scenes. Having seen it, one leaves it having learned something important and sad - as Saïd and Martinez were unable to connect in life but were drawn together in death, Indigènes to me is a story above all of missed rendezvous which is very much with us today.

Rachid Bouchareb certainly demonstrates the ability to get across a sense of war being absolute Hell for those involved; the Paris born filmmaker's 2007 piece Days of Glory unashamed of going some lengths to try and depict a war-zone on the Western Front of World War Two that is grotty, grimy, mud soaked and blood stained. His film is one of which will shift out of its way to encompass that of the carcasses of dead horses and dogs as a result of a farm-set skirmish; it is a film whose attitude to its subject matter sees it document a procession the soldiers whom we follow must go through, specifically, the having to laboriously drag, dig and then bury the dead of the enemies troops, all of which is played out to a harrowing silence and usually shot using extended takes with tight compositions.The rotten cherry on top of this stagnant cake is the realisation that those going through all of this are doing so, not for the glory of one's nation, but the honour of one's parental state; spare a thought for those inherently involved in said activity whom were there out of necessity for their nation's commonwealth and precolonial attitudes than individual, respective countries. Where the agony of life as a front-line grunt on arguably the planet's grimiest war of the twentieth century is on show most scenes for all to see, Bouchareb's film is one of which carries with it an underbelly of marginalisation; specifically, the zoning in on France and its attitudes to its troops of the North African territories fighting for a motherland in jeopardy few of them will have ever visited nor ever even will. The film's attitude towards war reads that it is most certainly Hell, but it is Hellish and persistently something else for those whom the film covers.The film will begin with some stock footage, 1940s-era newsreel footage, of various aspects of the lifestyle led in a nation which looks like it might be French North Africa – maybe Tunsia, or indeed even Algeria. There is a sense of it being a world away from what lies across the Mediterranean in the form of continental Europe, or even more specifically, that of France. This overseas territory, and its varying expressions of entertainment; culture and industry on show highlighting how different it is to that of its colonial mother figure. Yet, the film mutates into a piece all about the dragging of such a nation, seen in the scratchy black and white footage, into France's problems; and the fact they must fight for a nation seemingly so different to that of its own in a deal seeing a shared burden and fighting under the same flag.We follow a handful soldiers of this colonial army, their own chorus sung within the regiment made up of those ranging from black Africans most probably of places such as Senegal, to respective Arabs each echoing a somewhat bemused sentiment of having to come from the colonies to fight for the red, white and blue of France. A couple of them are Messaoud (Zem), somewhat of a sharpshooter within the ranks; Saïd (Debbouze), the stocky Arab of a humble background and Yassir, played by Samy Naceri doing well to atone for those Taxi films. As characters, their initial position in this war is strictly as that of rookies rather out of their depth with what it is they're facing; the vicious warfare against the rampaging Nazi war machine aside, a telling early sequence of events in the southern French region of Provence initially details a real lack of familiarity or prominence to their surroundings, with specific reference to religion; the local, even western, attitudes to those of the opposite sex; attitudes towards items otherwise out of grasp back home in the form of alcohol and basic, functioning ways of living such as sleeping here with sheets.Their initiation into warfare arrives after the establishment that the troops are underdogs in relation to the imminent fight; the physical bringing onto screen of a German rifle followed by the verbal confirmation of its superiority does not bode well for the immediate future. Following the battle, which results in an impressive Allied victory and is a well constructed sequence of warfare, Bouchareb illustrates the second part of his film's thesis after the depiction of colonial forces making a real effort and contributing greatly by supplying a photojournalist with a scene in which he is told by a French colonel to hype the battle up as a piece of propaganda, complete with little mention of the colonial forces and their efforts whilst keeping the win within the boundaries of it being "French".The episodic nature Bouchareb applies to the film eventually quietens down away from the hopping from locale to locale, each new place bookended by an establishing shot and a date to entirely place us, and the film beds into a neat groove of these soldiers getting by as they head deeper and deeper into occupied France. The characters develop personalities as the warfare shapes them, each of them forge goals one might say would have otherwise been unattainable had their "national" service not come about; Saïd wishes to become a Captain, whereas Messaoud meets a girl in Marseilles and desires to settle down with her – each instance an alluding to further sociological issues of which would become more prominent later on, as that of French colonial individuals becoming more integrated into France post-war. The film is imbued with this sentiment of remembering the past and how it ought to affect the present, and Bouchareb deals with that in the manner he deems fit, but it is ultimately a genre piece with its heart in the right place as well as a really good study of segregation that works an awful lot more than it doesn't.

Somewhat anomalous and powerful WWII story about racial hypocrisy between native born Frenchmen and men born in North African colonies; where is the Liberty, Equality, Fraternity? I was going to use the word 'amateurish' to describe the filmmaker but I have seen excellent movies made by amateurs, many of them done by people in film school. No, a better word is 'untalented'. The battle sequences are dramatically not cohesive, illogical and when it comes to the next-to-final battle scene it degenerates into a 40's class b WWII John Wayne film; the German soldiers apparently committing virtual mass suicide, walking into firefights with not much sense of covertness, much like the ending battle in 'Saving Private Ryan'. At times too the subtitles were non-sequiturs not seeming to be connected to what the characters were actually speaking about. Then there was the production design/art direction howler when a large Nazi eagle sign was removed from the facade of a liberated village's building. It looked like something a high school theatrical production crew would construct. See 'Days of Glory' for the rarely told historical story of cultural despicability that occurred during WWII but don't anticipate anything close to seeing a 'great film'.

I enjoyed the film and I probably would have given it a rating of 8 except for one thing. By the time the halfway point of the movie was reached, I couldn't help but notice that the actor playing Saïd (Jamel Debbouze) always had his right hand in his pocket. Since I was watching it on DVD, I of course had to stop and look him up on IMDb. After finding out that he had no right hand, I was then very distracted through the remainder of the film.I saw that he was a co-producer of the film. I question his judgment of not wearing a prosthetic hand in many of the scenes. Much of the movie took place in cold weather and they were all wearing gloves. Also, in the final scenes, he was the only one in the fire fight using only a hand gun, which looked odd. I just think that having your hand constantly in your pocket is not the best way to disguise this handicap.Harold LLoyd wore a prosthetic glove in many movies after his unfortunate accident when he lost his thumb and forefinger. I'm sure if he walked around with his hand in his pocket all of the time, people would have noticed.