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Algerian Oscar entry Days Of Glory illustrates a compelling facet of WWII - that, with its soldiers imprisoned in Germany, the French army enlisted its troops from Africa, and that it was these fighters that liberated much of France and Italy. What it doesn't do is reveal it in a particularly interesting or original way; its message is dimmed by a procession of war and race movie clichés that even the excellent cast and epic cinematography cannot revive.

Pulled from their lives in Algeria to defend a homeland they had never seen, and led by officers that saw them as little better than animals, the four soldiers we follow - Saïd, Yassir, Messaoud and Abdelkader - slowly find their feet as they sweep North from the Mediterranean to the foothills of the Vosges and the German border. A liberation parade through a French town by African forces - an image burned into collective memory as the sole preserve of American forces - warmly shows the mutual fascination between the cultures, a concept personified by the sweet ensuing romance between Messaoud (Roschdy Zem) and a local lady. Few other scenes match the coherence of this moment; most of the rest are drearily by-the-numbers.

"STANDARD PRIVATE RYAN ENDING"

The forgotten heroism of Muslims volunteering to join Western forces against a common enemy, along with the West's subsequent dismissal of the help they gave, is a powerful theme that is left to the audience's imagination by the now-standard 'shoot-out and flash-forward to the war graves' Private Ryan ending. Given the brutal post-1945 suppression of the Algerian independence movement, to say nothing of today's Islamophobia, a brief footnote on the later "African Army" pension swindle hardly makes up for it.

In French and Arabic with English subtitles

Days Of Glory is released in UK cinemas on Friday 30th March 2007.