THE FILM

The painless comparison to make for the French release, "A Prophet," is to position the picture in the shadow of "The Godfather." In terms of epic crime film storytelling and patient character transformation, it's a solid DNA match, yet "A Prophet" is a far more feral, scattered production, forgoing any sort of reassuring sweep to snap around like a cobra, striking randomly at anyone who steps near it. For better or worse, the picture pulses with menace, creating a striking portrait of the years spent deep inside a turbulent prison society.

At 19 years of age, Malik (Tahar Rahim) is about to begin a six-year prison sentence, entering a concrete jungle of criminals armed only with the barest of instincts. Malik is semi-illiterate and naive, capturing the attention of incarcerated crime lord Cesar (Niels Arestrup), who uses the boy to his advantage, deploying Malik to kill off his enemies and perform housekeeping work, soon taking him into the Corsican mafia group that runs the prison. Caught between his Arabic heritage and the suffocating, sadistic Corsican control, Malik learns the prison ropes slowly but surely, using his newfound wisdom and budding power to execute his own illegal dealings, courting danger from all sides as he builds a makeshift criminal empire from the confines of his cell.

"A Prophet" is intense and inhospitable, but it's also an intriguingly propulsive drama that respects the tenets of prison cinema while building its own identity through a distinctive cultural perspective. Directed and co-scripted by Jacques Audiard ("The Beat That My Heart Skipped"), "A Prophet" retains an icy stare, plunging cameras into bleak prison conditions and hostile inmate attitudes. The arc of the film lies within Malik, who enters the penitentiary a jittery child unaware of local rules and customs, madly scraping by to protect his person while the vultures descend.

Through his eyes we watch as the character journeys from mouse to man, a process jumpstarted by an order from Cesar to kill a crucial Muslim witness through the guise of sexual interest. The act is carried out successfully, though it drags a knife across Malik's psyche, severing his tenuous connection to the outside world. Within the first year of incarceration, the prison (and Cesar) owns him. The rest of his sentence is spent reclaiming his individuality, by hook or by crook.

"A Prophet" is a familiar viewing experience, and Audiard gives the material more of a cable movie polish than a ragingly cinematic one. The boys-behind-bars clichés are present, but never indulged to drowsiness, staying locked onto Malik's tortured sense of self, which provides an hypnotic screen vibration, guided astonishingly by Rahim's fingernail-tearing depiction of caged animal survival. The story cautiously unfolds further, with Malik using his prison leave privileges to form a drug smuggling circuit with a former inmate who once encouraged his education. There's also the business of Cesar, a ruthless master to Malik's obedient dog temperament, who finds his penitentiary control slipping away as the years pass, filled with disgust as the Muslim population explodes. Though a frail senior citizen, Cesar is a horrifying, spittle-drenched creature who refuses to relinquish his position of power, inadvertently encouraging Malik's resolve to fashion his own identity.

THE BLU-RAY

Visual:

The AVC encoded image (1.85:1 aspect ratio) quality retains a superb level of grain, contributing a film-like texture to the presentation that accentuates the intended grittiness. The grim details pop out nicely all around the frame, with reactions comfortably expressed, while the cold particulars of the prison are offered vivid life on the BD. Colors are rare but successfully separated and pushed through, with prison blues and oranges making the largest impression. Shadow detail is exceptional, with fabrics and dark, forbidding spaces easy to read.

Audio:

The 5.1 DTS-HD sound mix comes across wonderfully during the prison sequences, creating a tight, claustrophobic experience for the listener, with marvelous, groaning directional movement that sustains the tension and the madness. Dialogue is nicely arranged and easy to understand, with a solid frontal representation to establish dominance on the track. Some of the confrontations offer mild low-end response, but the meat of the mix deals directly with human interaction, shaping the prison with its own aural personality that comes across splendidly.

Subtitles:

English, English SDH, French, German, and Turkish subtitles are included.

Extras:

The feature-length audio commentary (subtitled in English) with director Jacques Audiard, actor Tahar Rahim, and co-writer Thomas Bidegain is a wandering discussion of the film's production, with the trio focusing primarily on characterizations and motivations, discussing how the sets built for the movie helped to shape personalities and the threat of the piece. The painstaking construction of the picture is also chatted up, with a lengthy editorial process arranging different beats than what was originally planned. The men are conversational and honest about the challenges of the film, bouncing well off one another as they work through the track. A very interesting listening/reading experience.

"Deleted Scenes" (10:34) delve further into prison life for Malik, as he encounters his demons, faces more acts of unspeakable violence, and is pulled deeper into Cesar's web of trust. While not adding much to the overall flow of the film, the scenes are appealing peeks into the mechanics of the prison.

"Rehearsal Footage" (8:50) takes the "A Prophet" action into what looks like a small apartment to feel around a few scenes and tighten performances.

"Screen Tests" (5:00) offer five looks at Tahar Rahim in the early moments of the filmmaking process.

And a Theatrical Trailer is included.

FINAL THOUGHTS

It doesn't take long for the feature to turn into an eye-spinning game of last names, building a pyramid of criminal intent that pays homage to the great underworld stories while indulging in its own spine-chilling mischief behind bars. It's a pretzel of a motion picture, further augmented with a few surreal dreamscape touches and optical tinkering, but "A Prophet" remains an accessible nightmare, with a near-masterful dosage of suffocation and brutality to help it crystallize in the senses long after it concludes.