A Prophet

This mod­ern gang­ster clas­sic fires the imag­i­na­tion with the epic sweep of The God­fa­ther com­bined with a bru­tal­i­ty that grabs you and won’t let go. Just like Good­fel­las, the audi­ence is soon immersed in the shift­ing hier­ar­chy of a Mafia fam­i­ly, here aug­ment­ed by a feu­dal prison sys­tem where every­thing has a price.

When young Arab hood­lum Malik (Tahar Rahim) finds him­self incar­cer­at­ed for six years in one of France’s tough­est jails, he’s ostracised by devout Mus­lim inmates dis­gust­ed by his lack of faith; shunned by Cor­si­can gang­sters who rule the yard; and des­tined for a fate worse than death.

Adrift in a dead­ly no man’s land where an ear­ly scene illus­trates that life inside is worth less than a pair of train­ers, real­i­ty hits hard. Malik – bare­foot in the bleak­est win­ter of his young life – is stripped down from the out­side in. Tak­en under the wing of Niels Arestrup’s Ital­ian gang boss after prov­ing his met­tle as a mur­der­er for hire, Malik is faced with a dark dilem­ma: be black­mailed into becom­ing a go-between, or die a nobody. But the under­dog has big ideas…

It’s a remark­able per­for­mance from big screen new­com­er Rahim – the young Algerian’s por­tray­al of a hard fought rise through the ranks from fresh-faced inno­cent to ruth­less king­pin is breath­tak­ing. Devoid of bom­bast, the audi­ence is pre­sent­ed with the always con­vinc­ing sto­ry of a man who has no choice but to adapt and sur­vive in a claus­tro­pho­bic prison system.

Jacques Audiard’s clever use of mag­ic real­ism allows us to glimpse Malik’s inner strug­gle with his own human­i­ty as we return to the scene of his first hit – a dis­turb­ing qua­si-reli­gious bap­tism of blood with a razor. It’s one of many chill­ing spikes in a nar­ra­tive not for the squeamish.

But it’s not just in the por­tray­al of the dehu­man­is­ing effects of prison life – with its cig­a­rette cur­ren­cy, drug addic­tion and bru­tal cell shake­downs – that A Prophet excels. As the sto­ry moves beyond the prison walls, some blis­ter­ing set pieces recall the quick fire brava­do of clas­sic Melville, and the brood­ing pyrotech­nics of Jules Dassin’s Rififi.

Audi­ard has pro­vid­ed French cin­e­ma with a shot to the main vein that should be a call-to-arms to a new gen­er­a­tion of French film­mak­ers to do it their way, con­cen­trat­ing on char­ac­ter and avoid­ing the pit­falls of Hol­ly­wood high concept.

Fol­low­ing on from the dou­ble-bar­relled biopic of Mes­rine, the Gal­lic gang­ster tra­di­tion appears to be in rude health. Audiard’s film is a tri­umph that deserves inter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion, but as with the likes of Gomor­rah, films that tell it like it is reap their own rewards.