A Prophet (2009)
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A Prophet Movie Review
A Prophet is a 2009 prison crime film directed by Jacques Audiard and starring Tahar Rahim. It’s such a mediocre movie.
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“The idea is to leave here a little smarter“
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It follows Malik, a delinquent young Muslim man, who is struggling to get by in a French prison. When he is taken under the wing of powerful Corsican mob boss, he begins performing regular assignments for him, proving himself invaluable to the imposing criminal. As Malik rises in the mob ranks, he gains more power, but also more enemies, a situation that eventually brings conflict with his mentor.
So I am not a fan of gangster films, and also prison movies to me are most very similar to each other. Let’s preface with that at first. However, if a movie is great, I will appreciate it even if I am not the biggest fan of its genre. And here simply that wasn’t the case.
Yes, A Prophet is very much like any other prison film, and like any other gangster flick out there. Almost nothing to it is original in any shape or form, and thus that rendered it pointless and extremely overrated. How it received such glowing reviews is beyond me.
Yes, the movie is well acted. I cannot deny that. Yes, it’s well filmed. Yes, it’s also hugely realistic. However, I found its realism to also act as a big problem. Most find its abundant details in prison life a strength, but to me it’s a weakness.
That’s because such an approach led to a particularly long film that is overly stretched to two and a half hours, and to many it was engaging, but to me it was very tedious and unappealing. I appreciated the central performance and the directing, but Jacque Audiard made a much better movie in 2015 with ‘Dheepan’.
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The movie is supposed to explore the Muslim and Corsican subcultures in the French prison system. It deals with Muslim fundamentalism and the problem in France of high immigration. But to me all of those issues, though very important obviously, are brushed aside in favor of your typical rising in the ranks of prison storyline which felt predictable and very tiresome. And the whole titular prophet angle was pointless and just ignored entirely.
A Prophet is supposed to deal with some very important issues, but unfortunately it mostly brushes them aside in favor of your typical rising in the ranks of prison storyline. Yes, it’s well acted and directed, but it’s overlong, very boring and predictable in its plot and at the end of the day this is just another standard prison gangster flick with nothing new or original to offer. Consequently, it’s strictly for the fans of the genre.
