On an ordinary night in a working-class neighborhood in the Algerian capital, a suspicious car drives down a street where several children are playing carelessly. The driver lures a young girl to the window and violently pulls her inside before driving away as the girl’s brother looks on in despair. This troubling incident, inspired by true events, ignites the sometimes tense, if often dramatic, social thriller “Algiers,” a feature film submitted by the country for an international Oscar, by writer-director Chakib Talib Bendiab.
Tensions are already running high in this city due to a lack of water (as a radio ad says), and the knowledge that a predator is roaming around adds fuel to the fire with angry local men trying to find the culprit themselves. The official investigation faces obstacles of its own, as Inspector Sami Sodoudi (Nabil Assali) clashes with Dr. Donia Essam (Maryam Majkan), a psychiatrist who specializes in post-traumatic stress disorder. Their disparate methods must reluctantly combine to find the child within the first 48 hours (after which the chances of finding her alive decrease dramatically).
Based on the shaken boy’s testimony, Dounia quickly deduces that the perpetrator has done this before. Her theory seems speculative at best, but Majkan’s depiction of persistence intrigues Al-Sadoudi. The plot moves along along with many other flimsy guesses that viewers are asked to accept without substantive evidence other than their convenient discoveries. Not that anything implausible ever happens, but the efficiency with which the pieces of the puzzle are put together feels narratively contrived. Neighbors suspect a disabled homeless man living in a nearby parking lot, but once that lead fails to yield tangible results, Majkan’s educated deductions take on greater significance.
Alongside Al-Sadoudi stands Khaled (Hisham Mesbah), a veteran officer who was present during the civil war in the early 1990s and believes that the police are justified in using force against their opponents. That righteous, above-the-law mentality takes over during a crucial moment late in the disturbing case. However, if Ben Diab’s intentions were to extrapolate the unrest of more than 30 years ago as the source of Algeria’s current social ills, the writing doesn’t really make the point – at least not for those who are not familiar with the details of what happened then. . This ideological divide between Al-Sadoudi and Khalid is most evident in the morally complex confrontation with a would-be killer in the wake of a horrific discovery. Cinematographer Iqbal Arfa focuses his camera solely on the eyes of the four men in question, each hoping for a different result.
That Talib Ben Diab plants multiple thematic angles but never follows through on any of them makes “Algeria” more of a scheme than a solid attack, and leaves all of its characters’ motivations unexplored. What “Algiers” lacks is a comprehensive examination of the reasons why this moment and this city created the conditions for a brutal individual to operate with impunity for more than two decades. There are hints as to what the answer might be, but the connections between these distinct cases and the unfortunate event at the heart of the film feel tenuous. The lack of cohesion ultimately reduces its emotional impact.
Ben Diab’s heroes feel like larger mysteries than the case they are desperate to solve, archetypes whose personalities and personal histories are only superficially revealed. Medjkane’s sombre performance believably conveys the gravity of what’s at stake. The revelation that she was recently the victim of an attack and that her father died should help one understand her resolve. However, its investment is undermined by how mysterious it is and how quickly it is revealed. Meanwhile, Asli paints Al-Sadoudi loosely by quoting “The Art of War” and voicing his grievances to the law enforcement establishment. One might assume that his irritable behavior derives from the pressures of a job in a chaotic city, but there is not much that can be deduced from his behavior. To some extent, Khaled’s apparent desire to leave power and set his own rules seems radical.
Confirming one of the flaws in the scenario, the film “Algeria” by director Ben Diab never returns to the girl’s brother or the woman who cares for them, nor does it delve into the identity of the other suspects and how they were implicated in the crime. The final minutes depend on minimal heroism to wrap up the ordeal with unearned precision. Toward the end, as night falls, protesters walk around them and gather to demand water. In this scene, Ben Diab succeeds in capturing a fascinating truth about urban spaces: the story of a missing child is only one among millions in this complex environment, and for most people, it will go unnoticed. However, despite some compelling examples, “Algiers” fails to coalesce into an afterthought of the city and its suffering.