Directed by Rachid Bouchareb. Starring Jamel Debbouze, Roschdy Zem, Bernard Blancan, Sami Bouajila. Club, IFI, Dublin, 138 min.

IF YOU WERE in the business of cheap comparisons, you might describe Rachid Bouchareb's epic family drama (a class of unofficial follow-up to the same director's Days of Glory) as an attempt to do for the Algerian independence movement what The Wind That Shakes the Barleydid for the domestic equivalent.

Like Ken Loach's film, Outside the Lawconcerns itself with brothers torn in different directions by the brutalities of late colonialism. But Bouchareb appears to have other models in mind. One thinks of The Godfather. Shades of Army of Shadows, Jean-Pierre Melville's tale of the French Resistance, also fall across the picture. The result is handsome, invigoratingly angry, but a somewhat unfocused hodge-podge of styles.

The film begins with a prologue, set in 1925, showing French forces driving Algerian peasants from their homes. A second preliminary skirmish depicts the Sétif massacre, during which the colonial forces killed independence protesters on the same day that France was celebrating victory over the Nazis.

Eventually, we find ourselves in France of the mid-1950s. Three Algerian brothers come together in a shanty town just outside Paris. The politically unconcerned Said (Jamel Debbouze) is a pimp and boxing promoter. Abdelkader (Sami Bouajila) has become a violently inclined member of the radical National Liberation Front. Messaoud (Roschdy Zem), a veteran of the Indo-Chinese wars, believes in a less violent route towards liberation.

Some conservative French critics have objected to the film’s apparent approval of the NLF’s campaign of violence. The script’s inclinations towards propaganda certainly lack subtlety. The real problem, however, is an embrace of Hollywood gangster motives at the expense of verisimilitude.

It is unfair to compare Outside the Law(or any movie, for that matter) to Gillo Pontecorvo's Battle of Algiers, but that film's faux- documentary realism powerfully conveyed the flavour of the rebel's fermenting anger. In contrast, Bouchareb's film often feels like an urban western with nationalistic accoutrements. Outside the Lawremains diverting, but it's hard to take seriously.