Algiers is a lean, earnest entry in the docu-procedural mode: formally assured in its urban cinematography and temporal pressure, intermittently hampered by thinly drawn character motives and genre clichés. When it trusts its spaces and its competing epistemologies—Sami’s force, Dounia’s analysis—it approaches something urgent. When it leans on familiar confrontations without clarifying their stakes, it wobbles. Even so, the film leaves a residue of hard questions about collaboration, gendered authority, and the civic cost of speed, which linger long after the countdown stops.