Against his mother’s wishes, Said (Jamel Debbouze, also a co‑producer on the film and best known to U.S. audiences as the dimwitted grocer’s assistant in “Amelie”), joins up with fellow North Africans heading off to join the fight to free France.

At boot camp, we encounter the four other principals of “Days of Glory.”

– Educated and ambitious, Abdelkader (Sami Bouajila) is a freethinking corporal bitter over the second‑class status accorded to Muslims and other French colonials but hopeful that the terrible war will provide opportunities for fair treatment.

– Messaoud (Roshdy Zem) is the skilled marksman of the lot, whose romance with a lovely Frenchwoman (Aurelie Eltvedt) brings home the injustice and bigotry Europeans feel toward foreigners as military censors intercept their love letters.

– Yassir (Samy Naceri) is a passionate, fierce fighter with a mercenary heart but an unshakable sense of courage and brotherhood.

– Martinez (Bernard Blancan) is the white sergeant charged with overseeing these and other North African soldiers, a man whose compassion and willingness to stand up for his men extends only so far after one uncovers his dark secret.

“Days of Glory” plays out like a North African take on “Band of Brothers” or Samuel Fuller’s “The Big Red One,” following the men from campaign to campaign in Italy, Provence and Alsace, the bond among the key players growing stronger with each bullet fired, each salvo survived.

The combat sequences are impressive but mild compared to huge Hollywood productions, yet Bouchareb crafts the battle scenes from a visceral, ground‑level perspective that punctuates the horrors these men experience.

There’s remarkable authenticity to the uniforms, armaments and sets, particularly in the bombed‑out husks of buildings in Alsace, which the troops are assigned to hold against superior German forces.

The film is loaded with bitter foreshadowing over the treatment of Algerians and other former French colonials in the years after World War II. Abdelkader speaks hopefully of him and his countrymen earning their stripes through battle, convinced that honor, respect and equality inevitably will be the reward for their valor.

A sobering epilogue makes no reference to the bloody war Algerians fought with France before gaining independence in 1962. But through a few simple images and a postscript about France’s decades‑long denial of pensions for former colonial troops, it encapsulates the disillusionment Abdelkader and his comrades lived through.

The cast of “Days of Glory” shared best‑actor honors at last spring’s Cannes Film Festival, a rare but well‑deserved group prize in praise of selfless performers subsuming themselves for the good of the entire ensemble.

“Days of Glory,” a Weinstein Co. release, runs 119 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.