A Prophet
Director: Jacques Audiard.
Starring: Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup, Hitchem Yacoubi, Adel Bencherif.
Details: France/Italy / 155mins (16).
This gritty prison drama is Oz minus the style and keeps guiding the audience where they least expected to go. And sometimes the last place they want to go.
Sentenced to six years in prison for assaulting a policeman, the uneducated nineteen-year-old Malik (Rahim) is thrown in with the big boys in one of France’s toughest prisons. Although an ‘Arab’ by birth, Malik has no affiliation with his Muslim brothers and ingratiates himself with the other prison gang, the Corsican mafia, who are in the throws of a mini-war on the outside. To earn their protection, Malik is forced to kill a rat, drug dealer Reyeb (Yacoubi). Treated like a slave by his new protectors, Malik slowly learns the ropes and, tiptoeing between the racial tensions of the two gangs, begins to play both sides off each other. But Reyeb’s killing weighs on Malik’s mind and his ghost haunts his cell...
A Prophet is a blow-by-blow account of a young hood’s rise through the ranks of the criminal underworld but don’t go thinking Goodfellas, as this is more akin to Gomorrah. Small on style and big on reality, A Prophet steeps itself in coarse authenticity – there isn’t a moment in this film that isn’t believable (except maybe Malick’s brief visions of the future). There are no exposition scenes, nothing is spelt out and Malik remains a mystery to the end. The audience isn’t granted any information on Malik before his prison time and nor does Audiard (The Beat My Heart Skipped) want them to; to the director, who also co-wrote the script with Thomas Bidegain, that’s irrelevant because prison is what makes him, turns him into what he is. It’s a damning indictment of the prison system.
A Prophet can be accused of peaking too early, however. Over two-and-a-half hours long, the drama’s highpoint is exposed in the first half hour with the deliberate planning of Reyeb’s murder and doesn’t have anything as strong in the locker until a beautifully executed hit much later. There’s a lot of waiting around for something to happen but during it’s in these quieter moments that newcomer Tahar Rahim really shines.
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Your Reviews
when rotten tomatoes gives it a 97% - Goff
If rotten tomatoes gives this film a 97%, and you think the film unworthy, then perhaps you should re-examine your role as movie critic
Review Published 10 May 2010
I hope Ian Bailey has seen this! - dee p
This was a great film. I'm not usually into gritty realism and parts had me dry retching into my sleeve but it was interesting, well shot, good character development (maybe a little too much.) I... MORE
Review Published 08 April 2010
Overrated - andrewire
I saw this movie quite a while now but didn't write a review inmediately after because I was unsure of how I would digest all the story... so I decided to give it a second try and rewatch it but... MORE
Review Published 01 April 2010
I didn't notice the 2 hours - movielover
Although it took me a while to realise there were different languages involved in this film and not just French, I thought it was a very clever film. With enough tension and humor, the viewer is... MORE
Review Published 07 March 2010
A Must See - pat2bornot2b
What a great film and no need for special effects, goes to show good acting and story are sill alive in cinema today. Enjoyable and dark, but luckily not too dark to be a downer. Prison can make a... MORE
Review Published 13 February 2010
Disappointed - O'G
I would agree with the main reviewer that after the inital murder there's a lot of waiting around for something to happen. Jacques Audiard is responsible for, in my opinion, one of the finest... MORE
Review Published 31 January 2010
excellent film (but long) - Michael McCarthy
There is no doubt that this is an excellent film. It's one of those films that while you're watching it you get the sense that you are watching something really special. On a very basic level it's... MORE
Review Published 29 January 2010
GTA vs PRISON BREAK with a super cool French twist of reality... - Dubman Joe
It's not just a film about gangsters in a French prison. If you like any kind of good crime/gangster story from the Godfather to Classic Film Noir or even the mild, mind numbing, formulaic... MORE
Review Published 28 January 2010
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