Review of Days of Glory (2006) by Sarah N — 15 May 2009

On the list of WWII stories criminally ignored by six decades of combat movies in the past 60 years, the heroics of French colonial soldiers ranks pretty high. But Rachid Bouchareb's powerful drama -- which won the 2006 Cannes Film Festival's best-actors award for its superb ensemble cast and was nominated for a best foreign-language-film Oscar, went a long way toward rectifying the situation, both on screen and in real life.

With its expertly staged outnumbered-and-outgunned climax in a small French village, and a coda set decades after the fact in a military cemetery, Bouchareb's film is strongly reminiscent of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, minus the gimmickry that made the final moments of Steven Spielberg's otherwise powerful film so frustrating.

Instead, the finale cuts right to the heart and leaves the viewer to dwell on the terrible injustices African veterans suffered at the hands of the French government, especially when the pensions of those hailing from colonies about to declare their independence from the "motherland" were frozen in 1959.

DAYS OF GLORY was originally released with an ad campaign declaring that the film changed the course of history, and it turns out the claim isn't just hype. Upon seeing the film in 2006, French president Jacques Chirac was sufficiently moved to finally restore the surviving soldiers' pensions to the proper amount.