A French platoon (in a movie that you might describe as a French Platoon) navigates the mountainous region of Kabylia and the equally rocky anxieties of occupation during the Algerian War, circa 1959. Albert Dupontel plays a world-weary sergeant, while Benot Magimel is the naive young lieutenant whose ethical idealism is crushed by the horrors of combat, torture and plenty of other melodramatic war-movie clichs. Conventional as the film may be, the two leads are quite adept, and director Florent Emilio Siri proves to have an exquisite eye for battlefield tableaux.—Aaron Hillis
Opens Fri; AMC Village VII. Find showtimes