emmanuel-zitnik

As usual, Pierre schoendoerffer is very sympathetic to soldiers in the most excellent movie from the early 80s, which tells the story of a dead Captain whose memory is publicly trashed on TV, 20 years after his death. The film is about his widow's struggle to prove that he wasn't a murderer and didn't practice torture while he was leading a ground unit during the Algeria war.

She decides to sue the man who accused him of being a torturer and thus begins an investigation which retraces the Captain's last 2 weeks, day by day.

The actors are awesome, which is pretty common in Schoendoerffer's movies. The storyline is using numerous flashbacks depicting battle scenes in Algeria, hunts for terrorists and shots of the Captain's previous life (resistant in WW2 and prisoner in Indochina).

All in all this is a very humanistic movie which main message could be that war is rarely a matter of Good Vs Evil, but rather a matter of Good Vs another Good.

This movie is just great. It's got a Fantastic entertainment value, very talented actors, goofy plot, an interesting monster etc... There is quite a number of hidden messages in the sub-text. Other reviewers pointed that out before: - This is both a critic of ultra-Capitalism (represented by an excess of mass consumerism) AND Communism (everybody ending up being the same) - It opposes Conservatives Vs Liberals (Stuffies vs the Militia) - Rural life Vs City life.

What's most important is that the movie is never pretentious in any way in quite a few scenes are downright spooky. It is just an extremely good flick to watch on a Saturday night. It could be the best B-movie of all times.

Rent it or buy it and I swear that you won't be disappointed.