Sunday, April 22, 2007

Days Of Glory - An anti-French, French film!

I hate the French. I hate listening to French spoken, it sounds for the most part like a long stream of diarrheic shit being emptied into a toilet bowl. For those reasons I need a good reason to see a French film. I'll never be so culturally open-minded as to simply want to see it because it's foreign. The quality of French cinema recently has been so good however, even compared to much of Hollywood's offerings in the past few years that I believe I will soon see a day where I may even be waiting in anticipation of a good Frog-Flick.

Days Of Glory is a war-drama, thought provoking and rich in irony. The story centres around a group of some Arab Algerian soldiers of an Algerian Infantry Division whom were trained and led by the French. They were present in the invasion of Italy and southern France to liberate these territories from the Nazis in the closing stages of WWII.

Director Rachid Bouchareb concentrated thankfully not so much on the war they were fighting against the Nazis but the internal struggle between the useless French wankers and the noble Algerians. These men gladly gave their lives for France but didn't even warrant being served tomatoes at for dinner by their asshole French commanders. They were never promoted, given leave and treated like shit. Years later after Algerian independence the pensions of Algerian WWII veterans were frozen by the French government a policy which still exists today, sickening.

I've seen so many Frog-Flicks now that I'm beginning to recognise some of their actors. Unfortunately the film superimposes tired cliched war-movie characters over otherwise fine performances from the actors. Noteworthy are Sami Taxi Naceri, whose character Yassir looses his brother and he goes a bit mental "Why God, why?" etc. and Roschdy 36 Zem who plays Messaoud, the sniper whom you know will die because he makes the fateful mistake of carrying around a picture of his girl and showing it to people.

Days Of Glory won't win any Whopper Awards, but it was certainly something I'm glad I saw and for the most part, enjoyed. It's all been done before, and much better with films like Saving Private Ryan, but it's selling point for me was it's anti-French-ness which I hope will only cement peoples understanding that the French are a nation of ignorant fucking cunts.

Colonel Creedon Rating: ***1/2

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'll bet the French love you too Colonel...

Major General Creedon said...

I hope not.

Anonymous said...

"... which I hope will only cement peoples understanding that the French are a nation of ignorant fucking cunts."

Kind of like America, The United Kingdom, and every other English speaking land, amirite there?

Major General Creedon said...

No you're not, but if you mean the French people in those countries then perhaps.