Steinesongo Too many fans seem to be blown away

ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Married Baby Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

ReganRebecca I'm not fan of most gangster movies, but Audiard's audacious A Prophet is stunning, involving and unlike anything I've ever seen. Tracing the roots of a poor French Arab teenager as he goes from having nothing to having everything, A Prophet is a rich, multi- layered movie that is part fairy-tale, part prophecy, and fully engaging. The movie begins with Malik El Djebena (Tahir Rahim in a star making turn), entering prison. He is 19, illiterate and has no friends on the inside or the outside. He spends his free time in the courtyard alone making him easy prey for those who want to steal from him, though the only thing of marginal value he has is his shoes. His luck turns when a new prisoner, an informant, notices him as a neighbour and offers to procure hash for him in exchange for oral sex. Malik is offended, but a group of Corsican gang members who have noticed the exchange offer Malik a deal. Kill the informant and have the protection of the Corsicans, or refuse and be killed. Strange as it may seem, this threat and brutal choice is the beginning of Malik's rise in the world of the prison and the world at large. An absolutely engrossing movie the lengthy running time of A Prophet allows Audiard time to really explore Malik and his life and the dilemmas he faces. A fascinating film it has a lot to say not only on the brutality of gang life but also on the shifting culture of France.

bluekaku Great overall story, no major twists but still not predictable, well done. I'll focus on the bad things though: Soundtrack/score - I don't remember any of it (I just watched this film an hour ago). There aren't that many great dialogues. Talk is mostly business.There's not much to the people in the film other than their prison life and crime. No one, with one exception, seems to have an outside life, a life they want to get back to. People want to get out of prison and go back to crime. Although in real life prison is a criminal factory, making one-time criminals into career criminals, lone criminals into gangsters and so on, even the most hardened criminals have other interests in life, have other lives and think and talk of other things. In that sense, the film's characters are a little underdeveloped.The film is a little long.Malik is also a little one dimensional. He's a cut-throat career criminal who just wants to go up the food chain. Other than brief flashes where he looks at a Playstation 2 in a supermarket, his porn collection, a conjugal visit and the moment where he enjoys the beach, he does not seem to want anything other than rise and become a boss. He shows no interest in having his own girlfriend, his own family, apartment, or any plans with the money he starts making. In that sense, his single-mindedness is one-dimensional.In a way, it is a coming of age film. Some reviewers see this as a story of a man who rediscovers his Arab identity in prison after affiliating himself with Corsicans, but that's not what the story is at all. He's a man who kept to himself and was forced to do work for the Corsicans. He used the Corsicans just as they used him and then caused an internal civil war that left them all dead, all but Cesar. He used the Arabs as well as pawns in his scheme. One of them said "You're just using us" to which he answered "So what? What's wrong if we all benefit?" He admits to using people. His loyalty is to himself as he sees first hand that there is no loyalty in the world of crime - the Corsicans have their own issues of trust, loyalty and betrayal within their own ranks and the bosses are pragmatic and know when to use small fish like Malik and deal with big fish like Brahim Latrache.The whole film is a long game of chess. Malik is forced to think quick and adapt, and so he becomes a pragmatic opportunist that thrives in the underworld.

SnoopyStyle Malik El Djebena is a 19-year-old Algerian-French. He is sentenced to six years in adult prison. He is alone and gets picked on. The prison population is split between whites Corsicans and Muslims. Ruthless Corsican mobster Cesar Luciani forces Malik to kill Muslim witness Reyeb. Despite being a Muslim himself, Luciani takes Malik in as a lowly grunt under his protection.This is a French prison personal epic. It is one of the better prison movies around. The only drawback for me is that I don't really root for Malik and Tahar Rahim never got my sympathies. I don't think the movie gives him the opportunity. I'm a little detached from his character. Nevertheless, this is a good tough prison movie.

ElMaruecan82 That proverb applies to young Malik (Tahar Rahim) a young convict with confused eyes, a young man whose life took a rendezvous with a place called jail, and where what was left from his innocence will forever be buried in the deepest depths of human vileness.As soon as he enters the jail, Malik is like a cub who's just lose his herd, he's nowhere and everywhere in the same time, and he becomes a moving target. We've seen enough prison movies ("The Shawshank Redemption" came to my mind first) to know that it's a matter of very short time before things get rough for Malik, especially, since he doesn't have the expansive physique to impress the other inmates. He looks more like a small-time delinquents from Parisian suburbs than a gangster. Much later, this youngish look will become his one saving grace.As for the present, he's instantly bullied by a prisoner, his shoes are stolen, and later in the shower, someone proposes a deal involving drug from one side and from the other... well think Shawshank and shower, and you'll get the picture. But this isn't only a starter, the worst is yet to come. Malik's misadventures caught the eye of Cesar Luciani (Niels Arelstrup) a sort of Don Corleone-like figure Corsican style, a fitting plot device since Corsicans carry are pretty much to France what Sicily is to Italy. The old man with glorious blonde hair that give him the aura of a lion reigning over his jungle proposes another deal to Malik. And like Vito Corleone, he literally made him an offer he couldn't refuse.The reasons he couldn't refuse the offer is because he would either kill or get killed, and he couldn't seek help from any authority for Cesar WAS the authority. Malik had to kill the inmate from the shower, learn how to hide a razor in his mouth and use it in the most gruesome way. From our viewers' experience, we know the killing won't lead to any form of punishment, that the guards would close this eye. But it's all in the killing, Malik, the rookie is all shaky and nervous, and I think I felt for the first time, the same sensation than Michael Corleone in the restaurant scene. But that killing, masterfully directed by Jacques Audiard, turned my blood to ice, and proved me that European Cinema, Hollwyood's eternal disciple started to surpass its master.Indeed, maybe Scorsese lost his touch but the Scorsesian touch wasn't lost, and Jacques Audiard resuscitated the best of American stylistic depiction of the gangster world with a new fresh environment : France. The rivalry went from Italians and Blacks to Corsicans and Arabs. Watching "A Prophet" had the suspenseful thrills of "The Godfather" and the exhilaration of "Goodfellas" with a naturalness all the more European. It's an extraordinary movie with a documentary-like realism that will satisfy all the fans of the crime genre in the world, and it's one of the best French movies of the last decade.It swept off all the major César in 2010 especially Niels Arelstrup who embodied the old-school gangster charisma, a mix of intimidation and fatherly tenderness, and Tagar Rahim who played Malik like a never-ending enigma. We could never penetrate his thoughts, was he proud of earning his protection to men treating him like an 'Arab', or being seen with contempt by his fellow Arabs. As much a gangster film "A Prophet is", it's also a wonderful character study where we follow each step of Malik's evolution without feeling the rush. He grows hair, learns to read, learns Italian, learns to observe, to talk, to tell the truth, to bluff, and to finally ooze enough respect so he can, when his turn comes, dismiss his own mentor.And at the end, when he walks away from the jail, with charismatic confidence, followed by his men driving expensive cars, as he finally become a prophet in his own 'country', yes I could buy it, with the same excitement when I first saw Michael Corleone's bad-ass strut after he killed his brother-in-law. "A Prophet" is of that caliber, a must-see gangster movie, one the French can be proud of.