This rousing, conventional World War II infantry picture, very much in the vein of “Saving Private Ryan” and “The Big Red One,” is also a pointed critique of the limits of French Republican ideology. The English title invokes “La Marseillaise,” a call to arms for “the children of the fatherland.” (The film’s French title means “natives.”) But the soldiers in this movie are all North African men, and, as such, colonial subjects rather than full citizens. Like African-American soldiers in the same war, they are expected to risk their lives for a “liberté” that remains cruelly theoretical, and for a nation that oppresses them. In insisting that France live up to its ideals, the film is both an ardent defense of those ideals and a warning about the consequences of betraying them. Available on DVD only. A. O. SCOTT