‘A Prophet’ – compelling prison gangster movie

Jacques Audiard's A Prophet, which won the Grand Jury prize at Cannes last year, is the astonishing and disturbing tale of a young man's prison education. It follows 19-year-old Malik El Djebena as he gets a short, sharp lesson in survival before rising through the treacherous jailbird ranks.

Tahar Rahim, the 28-year-old French Algerian who plays the apparently naive new inmate, is a revelation in his first film role - all the more exceptional given that A Prophet is two-and-a-half hours long.
 
Malik plans to spend his six-year sentence keeping to himself when another prisoner, the malevolent Corsican mobster Cesar Luciani (Niels Arestrup), makes him an offer that he literally cannot refuse. If Malik does not murder another inmate - Reyeb, a fellow Arab - Luciani will have him killed. Should he do as he is asked, he will be given the protection of the Corsican Mafia for the duration of his sentence.
 
The film's storyline can occasionally feel unrealistic - Malik seems virtually unassailable as he plays the different groups of prisoners off each other. But Audiard's raw, realist cinematic style is strikingly effective and balances with his more quirky, stylised touches. However the Tarantino-esque chapters into which the film is divided seem unnecessary and the film's title is addressed only in one brief and confusing scene.
 
These quibbles aside, A Prophet is compelling, if at times difficult to watch. In one scene Malik, perhaps at his nastiest and most ambitious, appears almost childlike as he delights in his first-ever plane trip. The audience, too, is more than happy to go along for the ride with him.
 
As for Rahim, he has spoken about how he became overwhelmed by watching performances by Audiard's previous leading men, such as Romain Duris in The Beat that My Heart Skipped and Vincent Cassel in Read My Lips. "It stopped me from feeling bold enough to put in my own thing," Rahim said. "But when I did, I was suddenly flying."
 
WHAT THE CRITICS ARE SAYING:Peter Bradshaw, the Guardian: "Jacques Audiard's terrific prison-gangster movie calls to mind old-fashioned French thrillers by Jean-Pierre Melville and Jules Dassin's Rififi. The film shows Audiard to be the biggest beast in new French cinema."
 
Damon Wise, Empire: "A Prophet is an astonishingly detailed crime drama that could end up being this year's Gomorra, but although it's arguably more accessible, its 2hr 30 min running time might deter many that might otherwise be drawn to it."
 
Dave Calhoun, Time Out: "Audiard suggests that being an underdog - socially, racially, economically - in an unfriendly society can lead to desocialisation and anti-social behaviour. But Malik's story is so wild that it obscures such ideas." (Verdict: 4/5 stars)

Peter Brunette, the Hollywood Reporter: "What finally cuts much deeper than the surface realism (a quality not exactly lacking in recent prison films like Hunger) is Audiard's minute deconstruction of the various ways power is manifested in prison and, by extension, in human life at its most basic."

Wendy Ide, the Times: "This is exhilarating filmmaking, a movie which instantly takes its place alongside the greats of the crime movie genre." (Verdict: 5/5 stars) ·