Chronicling the 1954-1962 revolution that would eventually lead to the end of French colonial rule in Algeria, The Battle of Algiers is a bleak, uncompromising portrait of terrorist warfare and a war on terror.The film starts with French soldiers interrogating a captured Algerian prisoner. The man's will has been broken, and his weary, tear-streaked face alludes to the torture he has endured. The French soldiers, led by the charismatic Col. Mathieu (Jean Martin), assure their prisoner he has done the right thing. But the emotionally dead gaze in the man's eyes says something to the contrary. As Mathieu leads his men on a raid to find rebel leader Ali La Pointe (Brahim Haggiag), the magnitude of the betrayal that occurred moments before the camera entered the interrogation room becomes painfully clear.

Hiding behind a false wall in Algiers' Muslim Casbah, Ali and his three companions in the Algerian National Liberation Front, or FLN, await their fate. As Mathieu and his men rampage through the apartment concealing them, Ali and his fellow rebels—which include a woman and a young boy—pray for an escape that will never come. As the moment of their impending capture—or death—comes ever closer, Ali reflects on the course of his life leading up to this point.

A communist who fought against the fascists during World War II and a student of Italian neo-realism, Pontecorvo brought both an artistic aesthetic and a political ideology to The Battle of Algiers. Shot in stark black-and-white, Pontecorvo's film bears an uncanny resemblance to a documentary. During its initial release in 1965, the film's distributor added a disclaimer: "Not one foot of newsreel or documentary film has been used."

Such a statement might seem merely a hyperbolic marketing stunt, until you see the gritty reality Pontecorvo portrays. From the frenzied panic that follows a series of terrorist bombings to the throngs of Muslim dissidents who take to the streets to oppose French rule, much of The Battle of Algiers appears composed of actual riot footage captured just as the shit was hitting the fan. Pontecorvo made a film of historical propaganda by working closely with the newly liberated Algerian government, as well as Saadi Yacef, the former leader of the FLN, who basically plays himself in the movie. But his roots in neorealism kept the director from crafting a film that paints its characters in absolutes. Instead, Pontecorvo and co-writer Franco Solinas create a world of moral ambiguity, in which the heroes are terrorists who resort to killing innocent civilians to advance their cause, and the villains are French soldiers who also resort to killing innocents to achieve their goals. No one is entirely good or bad, both sides are right and wrong. And while the film and the filmmaker clearly take the side of the FLN, Pontecorvo is careful to give the The Battle of Algiers enough sense of balance that it endure more like a historical document, and less like biased propaganda.

With the current situation in Iraq, and the Pentagon's screening of The Battle of Algiers, much has been made of the film's relevance to current events. Perhaps the most significant theme in that discussion is why the French refused to support military action in Iraq. What they learned during the Algerian conflict, and what is so brilliantly conveyed in this film, is that winning battles is not the same as winning a war.

To that end, The Battle of Algiers does not serve either as a great training film for political revolutionaries or as a helpful tool for understanding how to combat terrorists. Instead, it is a brilliant piece of cinema that offers a cautionary tale about the high cost of violence as a means to an end.

Video:
The Battle of Algiers is presented 1.85:1 widescreen and is enhanced for 16:9 televisions. The picture transfer is amazing, capturing the gritty beauty of cinematographer Marcello Gatti's camera work.

Audio:
The original score for The Battle of Algiers was composed by Ennio Morricone, and even though the audio on the disc is presented Doldy Digital Mono, it sounds fantastic. Morricone's score is nothing short of brilliant.

Extras:
Okay, this is a part of the Criterion Collection, which means one thing – a ton of bonus features. In the case of The Battle of Algiers, there's two extra discs of bonus material, and a 56-page book. Honestly, the first disc that simply features the beautiful transfer of the film, a production gallery and trailers would be enough to make me happy. The second disc, Pontecorvo and the Film," is the better of the two bonus discs. Gillo Pontecorvo: The Dictatorship of Truth is an informative 37-minute documentary from 1992 that explores the life and career of the filmmaker, and serves as a great introduction to the man, his work and his politics. Five Directors features interview clips with Spike Lee, Mira Nair, Julian Schnabel, Steven Soderbergh, and Oliver Stone as they discuss the impact and importance of The Battle of Algiers. The disc's other documentary is a 51-minute "making of" featurette that gives a ton of background on The Battle of Algiers, and includes new interviews with much of the cast and crew, including Pontecorvo, Morricone, and Yacef.

By the time you get to the third disc, "The Film and History," chances are you'll be pretty burned out. The third disc features four documentaries, focusing more on the history of the Algerian conflict and terrorism. The 1992 documentaryGillo Pontecorvo's Return to Algiers is the one that most closely relates to the film, and is also the one most likely to appeal to fans of The Battle of Algiers. The other documentaries, while being informative and interesting, verge on being overkill, and don't beg for immediate viewing.