Dissidents in a French colony attack a police station and take hostages.
It gets bogged down in detail at times, but there’s no mistaking its sense of injustice.
Rebellion doesn’t set out to be a crowdpleaser; nor is it really a thriller, despite its subject. Rather it’s an absorbing political drama, eloquent and angry.
It's a very talky film, and points are reiterated needlessly; the end titles, offering a postscript, are better suited to the lecture theatre. It's intelligent and indignant, all the same, and would have benefited from keeping its resonant French title, L'Ordre et La Morale.
As a filmmaker, Kassovitz is impassioned and full of righteous indignation about what went wrong and he does a good job of humanising the rebels and depicting their plight in terms that are understandable without being too reductive.
Kassovitz makes these unfamiliar events accessible and involving in this intelligent, politically-charged drama.
Though occasionally too didactic and on-the-nose, Kassovitz's film often makes for compelling cinema.
As an enraged activist Kassovitz is on much surer ground and delivers a harrowing and gripping account of a horrifying true story.
The movie doesn't delve too deeply into the mentality of Legorjus or indeed anyone else, but it's a tense, involving tale of France's forgotten imperial trauma.
It's an exciting, complex story...all the more interesting because the incident has been so rapidly forgotten, and indeed failed to become a cause celebre in its time.
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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