text: Retrospective appraisal and influence On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 99% based on 93 reviews, with an average rating of 9.10/10; the site's consensus reads: "A powerful, documentary-like examination of the response to an occupying force, The Battle of Algiers hasn't aged a bit since its release in 1966." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 96 out of 100—indicating "universal acclaim"—based on 22 reviews collected since its 2004 re-release.
  By the time of the film's 2004 re-release, French reception was much more positive, with most critics accepting the film's aesthetic merits and historic significance as a given. A review in Libération deemed it the "best film ever made about the Algerian war" because it had been "the most credible and the fairest". A notable dissent came from Cahiers du Cinéma, which devoted a special feature to the film comprising five articles by various authors; the magazine's collective editorial denouncement of the film was "cast in such strong terms that it undermined, on moral grounds, the legitimacy of any critic or analyst who did not condemn the film, let alone anyone who dared consider it worthy of filmic attention," though ultimately their disapproval exerted little influence upon the broader French media.