If we are going to be brutally honest - and let's be - the French contribution to defeating Nazism during World War Two didn't exactly find itself dripping in glory.

After an indecently swift capitulation, it was pretty much collaboration as an hors d'hoevre with the dubious delights of the anti-semitic Vichy regime the main course.

However, when the tide turned against the Third Reich, there was a golden opportunity for the Gallic nation to reclaim its noble qualities of "libertie, egalitie fraternitie".

Director Rachid Bouchareb demonstrates how a regime hidebound by institutionalised racism did anything but, betraying its African-born countrymen as they took up arms against the retreating Nazis.

Adopting a Band of Brothers-style narrative, we follow a group of Algerian troops from their enthusiastic enrolment in the heat of North Africa to their bitter disenchantment with a bigoted high command in the chill of northern Europe.

There's the romantic Messaoud (Roschdy Zem), whose mutual attraction with a French girl is snuffed out by a racist bureaucracy and Said (Jamel Debbouze), an illiterate peasant who slowly realise the iniquities being piled onto the battalion.

These include denial of leave after months of spirit-draining combat, casual prejudice - in one scene, the North African troops are denied fresh tomatoes - and scant acknowledgement of the key role played by what is largely a volunteer force.

Corporal Abdelkader (Sami Bouajila) is convinced the French army is the only way toward equality with the colonial powers yet he is continually passed over for promotion while his superior officer Martinez (Bernard Blancan) has had to conceal is Arab origins to make the rank of sergeant.

It's solid film-making, boasting impressive action sequences - one highlight is a vicious firefight with a numerically superior platoon of German troops in an Alsace village.

There's few flights of fancy, with Bouchareb preferring to lay bare the distasteful truth about the French government's contemptible treatment of their African brigades.

Perhaps the most depressing - yet sadly unsurprising - revelation comes at the end of the film when it is revealed these brave men were being denied their full rights to an army pension.

Following the film's screening at Cannes, the French dug deep into their pockets to put things right.

Vive la France? Not this version.

Tim Evans