User Reviews

"Un prophète" tells the story of a somewhat naive but intelligent young inmate from Arabic origins who rises through the criminal ranks to become a big boss. Serve with an outstanding cast and an almost exclusively males and non-professional actors, the film of Jacque Audiard manages to prove that you don't need a so called bankable actor/actress in order to make a masterpiece.

What you need is a vision, an excellent scenario and a perfect casting. Set mainly within prison walls, the film depicts the prison "career" of Malik el Djebena, a 19-year-old man of North African origin who was sentenced to six years in prison. At his arrival in prison, Malik (wonderfully played by Tahar Rahim) is forced by Cesar Luciani, a Corsican kingpin (played by the excellent Niels Arestrup) to kill a prisoner named Reyeb. What follows is a powerful film that grabs your attention from beginning to end. The film works on so many levels and yet achieves excellence in all of them. "Un prophète" works as a social description of the hellish atmosphere one could encounter in prison. The promiscuity, the dirtiness, the drug, the sex, the corruption are detailed through very well drawn out characters and situations. You live in prison and what you live isn't giving any concessions to reality. "Un prophète" is a thrilling gangster film deprave of any sort of Manichaeism. Between the buildings of a drug business, the contract to assassinate a mafia kingpin, the negotiation with a local mobster and the rise to power of a young bandit or "racaille", the film manages to link every single story and wrap them all in one big and dark vision of what the French society can also produce. Eventually the film triggers so many emotions; in 150 minutes the audience balances from bitterness to injustice and from violence to peace. Jacques Audiard and Stéphane Fontaine (director of photography) controlled with mastery both the "mise en scène" and the cinematography. Using here stop motion there torch like effect and opposing darkness to light they cut out possible definitions for the words loyalty or betrayal, friendship or servitude, destiny or curse.

The director of the excellent "de battre mon coeur s'est arrêté " and the very good "sur mes lèvre" signs here a haunting movie a unique cinematographic and emotional experience, a masterpiece.

A 19-year-old man of North African origin is sentenced to six years in prison for assaulting a police officer. When he enters prison, he is naïve, shy, and almost withdrawn and cannot read or write. When he leaves six years later, he has become a self possessed, educated individual, capable of controlling his own destiny as well as that of others. Jacques Audiard's (Read My Lips, The Beat That My Heart Skipped) A Prophet, winner of the Grand Prix Award at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, is an engrossing coming-of-age drama set in a French prison in which Malik el Djebena (Tahar Rahim), a Muslim estranged from his own community, is recruited into the ruling Corsican Mafia and eventually becomes a gang leader himself. Though deeply involved in nefarious and often bloody activities, the genuineness of his personality makes him an appealing and sympathetic character and adds depth to a riveting experience.

Based on a story by screenwriter Abdel Raouf Dafri, the film clocks in at a lengthy 150 minutes but never feels padded or stretched out. Unable to film in an actual prison location (because they were all being used), Audiard had his own prison built in an industrial area of Paris. As he explains, "Watching it take shape helped us build the prison in our minds, as well." When Malik first arrives, he is singled out by Corsican Mafia boss César Luciani (Niels Arestrup) and told to kill a fellow Muslim prisoner Reyeb (Hichem Yacoubi) by slitting his throat with a razor blade. If he refuses, he will be killed himself.

Once the job is done in as brutal a killing scene as you will ever witness or want to witness, Malik is put under César's protection, becoming the Corsican's Arab who carries out menial tasks for him inside the prison. Beset by visions of the deceased Reyeb, Malik, however, soon begins to educate himself on many levels, not only learning to read, but teaching himself Corsican and learning details of Luciani's business. More importantly for his survival, he learns how to operate among the various prison subcultures with their various rituals and codes of honor though he is still an outsider, not fully trusted by either group.

There is no shortage in the film of details involving drug traffic, sex, payoffs, and general prison corruption, things we have seen before, yet the level of our personal involvement remains high due to the heart pounding set pieces and the compelling performances of the lead actors. Slowly, César raises the level of jobs given to Malik, affording him the opportunity to leave the confinement of the prison on several day passes, one involving his first ever flight to Marseilles to negotiate with another Mafia kingpin. Little by little, Malik sets up his own enterprises with his friend Ryad (Adel Bencherif) who is suffering from cancer, and begins to establish his independence from the Corsicans. He becomes known as a prophet when he survives a bizarre car crash, an incident that has been foretold in a fantasy sequence.

Supported by a compelling original score by Alexandre Desplat and brilliant cinematography by Stéphane Fontaine, A Prophet is violent, often ugly and difficult to watch, but is redeemed by the quality of the direction, the outstanding performances by Rahim and Arestrup and the honesty in which it handles the conflicts among ethnic groups, conflicts that mirror French society as a whole. Tahar Rahim is little more than a cipher at the beginning, yet acquires considerable strength of character by the end of the film. According to Audiard, "When I looked into his eyes there was no melancholy, no tragedy, just someone very open, very light, very full of life." A mixture of gritty reality, flights of fancy, identity exploration, and psychological character study, A Prophet is one of the best films of 2009.

Malik (Tahar Rahim) is a nineteen-year-old Arab boy, thrown into a French prison to serve a six-year sentence. He is alone without any friends, contacts or relatives. Inside the prison is an ongoing feud between the Corsican and the Arab prisoners. Malik cannot read or write but he is able to speak Arabic, making him an asset to César Luciani (Niels Arestrup), a criminal who has the guards in his pocket and seemingly unlimited power in the prison. César wants to use Malik to infiltrate the Arab cellblock and kill someone. He offers him protection but also brutally threatens to kill him if he refuses or does not comply. Malik's attempts to escape his first assignment are futile because of the power the Corsican gangsters hold and ultimately his murder of the inmate becomes just one chapter in a lengthy career of organised crime.

Last year director Jacques Audiard was awarded the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival for A Prophet and his film was also nominated for the Golden Palm as well. More recently, the film was named Best Foreign Film at the BAFTA Awards, certifying its contentions for Oscar glory too. There are enormous expectations when a film is surrounded by these sorts of accolades, which makes it disappointing to say that this is film that one would like to love, rather than having complete admiration for everything that it does. Regardless, Audiard's film is still inspired by a number of qualities that immerse one into the callousness of gangsters and prison life. The film has been photographed for maximum authenticity and realism, with the muted colours a reflection of the raw grittiness of the prison but also the isolation of Malik himself too. The attention to detail in each of the scenes, from the containment of the tiny cells, the graphic violence or even the way the guards thoroughly strip-search prisoners, represents gritty film-making at its most uncompromising.

The films narrative commences in the most fascinating way, demonstrating the unflinching power of the mob, even in confinement. The tension that is developed from Malik's preparation of his first task is quite extraordinary. The vision of him holding a razor blade in his mouth and then spitting blood in a sink is filmed with such clarity and dread that it becomes mesmerising in its brutality. What climaxes at the end of this task is as suspenseful as it is disturbing. It is odd then that the rest of the film is muddy and fails to reach the heights of intensity of this previous scene. While there are some satisfying moments showing Malik growing in his stature, the film becomes increasingly bogged down and confusing in its details about deals and double-crosses and the business aspects of drug running. It is with this convoluted narrative, a contrast to the early parts of the film, that a lot of the power of A Prophet is diminished, making it harder to care about what is going on.

Aside from the confusing storytelling, one of the most consistent aspects of the film is the very strong performance by Tahar Rahim as Malik. The decision to use a lesser known actor is a smart one because Rahim is able to build a completely assured reality about this character. His appearance convinces as much as his emotions. He has scars all over his back but one can also envision the internal trauma he suffers, given the blood on his hands. He grieves prior to his assignment and then afterwards he is regularly plagued by the ghost of the man he murdered. He gradually grows in confidence over the years, becoming a more efficient criminal, but he is also frustrated by his feebleness at the hands of César. It is quite an accomplished performance for a relatively young actor. César is a thoroughly interesting character as well, because while he is selfish, brutal and intolerable to Malik, there is also one part in the film where he shows a hint of vulnerability as he sits alone in his cell, following the transfer of a number of his men. This is again another really strong performance by an actor who is not particularly recognisable, allowing for a complete sense of immersion into the performance.

A Prophet could be a film that improves on multiple viewings if one is able to obtain a greater understanding of the plot and the interplay between the gangs. On initial viewing some will feel they are completely out of the loop and others might be deterred by the infrequent but highly graphic violence and difficult subject matter. These issues aside though, Audiard's film still possesses a gritty, authentic visual style along with a complex and layered performance by Rahim, who will in time become a powerful contributor to foreign cinema.

Went to see this after the rave reviews. However it's actually not that great. In fact, it's a very muddled film: there's no sense of identification with the quiet, cunning lead, Malik. By the time he's released from prison, at the end of the film, he has a gang of henchman that follow him in a car and van at a respectable distance.

What goes on in between is his rise to power, playing off the Corsicans (who he works for initially) and the Arabs (who are his kinsmen). It is definitely gritty, and the scene that stands out most is him practising putting a razor blade in his mouth for one of the earlier scenes. The prison life is also 'grim grim' (not 'clean grim' like The Shawshank Redemption!). It is also a crime film about the rise of a nobody through the ranks, via his own ingenuity and networking.

But so what? It's not as entertaining a crime film as many others. The actors aren't fleshed out memorably, including the lead, who broods a lot and talks little, so who knows what he feels (except for scenes when you see the first person he murdered, haunt him again). It just isn't all that exciting after being told it was.

One point that sums it up: he is called a 'prophet' on his way to meet a drug dealer in a car, when he shouts out to stop after seeing a warning sign by the roadside for deer. A deer then leaps out a second or two later and hits the car. That's it. No other explanation, and one of the guys in the car nicknames him 'The Prophet'. It's not even alluded to again later on.

That's the second time I watch this very very powerful crime drama.

What a jewel, the perfect example of Hollywood industry will never - and I mean it - never make. That's the perfect "anti SCARFACE" movie. The best example of what the ambitious thugs in prison have to do in order to succeed in the crime world. SCARFACE was somewhere a very moral film, where the ending showed the audiences that crime never pays. In this movie, that's just the contrary. Everyone, well nearly everyone, can identify himself in the main character. The common petty hoodlum who is ready to anything to become a gang leader. Anything. That's not the hero type. No, folks. Sometimes, he may make you feel dizzy, especially in the murder sequence, in the cell, when he cuts his mate's throat, only to save his own life, threaten by the Corsican mob. And afterwards, he also may look like a good guy, brave and so on, but he still remains a bastard.

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And at the end, he survives and you guess he will become a real lead in the crime industry. Only because he was a ruthless guy. The real, cruel face of reality.

And appreciate the nearly finale scene, where the former Corsican gang leader falls, suddenly becomes no one, the exact character the lead was at the beginning of the film. This made me think, think, think, long after the viewing of this absolute superb french crime drama.

From France comes one of the finest crime movies I've seen in recent times. I wouldn't hesitate to put it alongside a modern masterpiece like City of God. Jacques Audiard's is not as technically inventive as Fernando Meirelle's movie, but in its linear plot it also tells a brutal story about a man who has nothing else to hold on to other than a life of crime.

Malik El Djebena is a young Arab man who arrives at a penitentiary without knowing anything about prison life, without connections inside and without friends outside. In short, prison is about to become a manual for life. And what he learns is how to kill people, outguess inmates, mediate between gangs, set up his own drug business and other useful knowledge that will be useful in his future life of crime outside. Because in spite of his corruption, Malik is an exemplary inmate, protected by other inmates and with certain perks, like having half a day outside prison to work in an honest job, as part of his rehabilitation process.

Outside prison he performs missions for the prison Kingpin, a Corsican named César, who's taken Malik under his wing after he killed a snitch for him. César, like the other racist Corsicans who run the prison, thinks Malik is just an ignorant Arab and yet as time goes by he becomes the only person the kingpin can trust. Entrusting him with secret knowledge about his operations, César cannot see his impending downfall as Malik negotiates with his business partners.

A Prophet portrays the world as a ruthless place without real friendship or love, just business transactions, fear, useful alliances and the pretence of trust when it suits someone. It's a world where people have to be outsmarting each other all the time, and it's a game at which Malik excels as he learns everything about everyone while keeping a low profile as a worthless, dumb Arab. Finally, it's a world where old debts aren't forgotten and where revenge is always at the back of one's mind.

Tahar Rahim steals the show as the initially confused and fragile Malik, who slowly becomes the ruthless, hardened leader of a criminal organisation. Niels Arestrup plays the old César, a top criminal who's slowly losing all the influence and power inside his prison without realising it. The two actors had an amazing chemistry and the viewer can't help wondering if there was any genuine trust or friendship between the two, or if they simply used each other, so complex and nuanced were their performances.

A Prophet is an outstanding movie, an example of the good cinema still made nowadays, amidst all the mediocrity. It's intelligent, brutal, funny, exciting and sad. In sum, it's a complete and perfect cinematic experience.

If this what gets Academy awards, Golden Globe, etc. etc. then woe on our cinema. This film is full of prison tropes, excruciatingly long and pointless. After reading a positive review of MANOHLA DARGIS in the Times, who's not often complementary and is not afraid of controversy, I invested two and a half hours of my time and left disappointed. What Dargis praised is in the murder scene where main character notices fancy shoes in the vitrine, while he should be preparing for the kill and his emergence after committing the murder as if being reborn (being in a haze as if in the womb) as a committed killer. This was indeed interesting solution, but what about other 2 hours and 20 minutes? The film feels like an average student's work.

There is an element of 'strangeness' in the film because of twice removed language-culture: in the framework of French state and language we see French-Arabs and French-Corsicans with Italian flavor and also some French-Africans. This is unusual for average American viewer, however overwhelming majority of action is taking place in the prison, all you see is concrete of the cells and the shower room.

Characters and action are very poorly developed. Malik's motivation is not clear. He does not seem at first to be a killer, then succumbs to the pressure, kills his fellow Arab, then becomes good at scheming and moves into a leadership position. Interestingly, the apparition of his fellow Arab he kills, appears to him in the guise of a spiritual adviser and Koran teacher. As a result, Malik emerges as a positive character, finally becoming Arab again (this is after all his betrayals) and the wife of his deceased friend seems to offer herself and her child to him. The implication perhaps that Malik, who was an animal, now has connection with the child...? I give up.

In summary, the story line is a kind of lunacy, amateurish and embarrassing.