L'Ordre et la Morale (Mathieu Kassovitz, 2011)

Shockingly generically titled Rebellion for English-market distribution, Kassovitz's personal project places himself centre stage as Philippe Legorjus, a police hostage negotiator sent to the overseas territory of New Caledonia to resolve a crisis in which local separatists have captured local gendarmes. This is all based on a true story, with the 1988 French Presidential election looming large in the background and soon coming to dictate the whole course of proceedings.
It's obviously very heartfelt for the director, and on occasion the balancing act between communicating the bare facts and polemicising gets precarious, with too much polarisation between the callous politicians and military on one side and the soulful and moral freedom fighters on the other. It may also be hard for a British viewer to resist a sense of smugness about France's continuing failure to deal with its post-colonial insecurity, albeit that the parallels that can be drawn between their bulldozering attempts to deal with the guerrilla problem also invite easy comparison with the ongoing Iraq and Afghanistan situations. But the film is ultimately raised beyond such niggles by its sheer sense of righteous anger at injustice, translated effectively into taut and morally tortured drama. Finally, an overdue return to form for the director of La Haine.

7/10