Annaud's Black and White in Color is an ambitious film packaged as a modest anti-war satire. It meets and exceeds its ambitions, with an intelligent script that keeps us, the audience, fully in-the-know throughout. There is a satire of colonialism, of civilian zealots, of arrogance, of racism, of the Great War and politicians, of the emptiness of slogans and braggadocio, and also of the lust for power and the acquiescence of ordinary people to powerful people. The on-location filming in the Ivory Coast was a treat. It's a story that keeps us thinking all the time about what's absurd, what's realistic, and about knowing right from wrong.