Intimate Enemies

The Algerian war of independence is the setting for this episodic ‘soldier’s story’ drama, which follows the fates of an idealistic lieutenant (Magimel) and a jaded sergeant (Dupontel) through a handful of missions together. Director Florent Emilio Siri is clearly comfortable with the action sequences – his last film was the Bruce Willis explode-athon Hostage – but is less successful at establishing fully formed characters. The result is that we feel every bullet hit but we don’t really care about the people being taken out. While there is definite value in digging into this less than golden period of French history, Intimate Enemies doesn’t get much further than the surface – it’s well-intentioned, but you’d do far better by checking out Paths of Glory as a study of French military failings or The Battle of Algiers for insight into the Algerian conflict. [Parker Langley]