A Prophet

City Paper Grade: B

by Sam Adams

FOR PROPHET: César (Niels Arestrup, left) recruits Malik el Djebena (Tahar Rahim) to take down a rival prison mob in A Prophet.

[ City Paper Grade: B ]

Set largely in a French cell block, Jacques Audiard's A Prophet is less a film noir than gris, its scuffed-up surfaces suggesting a world where everything and everyone is just about spent.

Malik el Djebena (Tahar Rahim), a young Arab with no family, is slapped with a six-year term for a minor offense, and quickly becomes the latest tool in a conflict between the Corsican gangsters who control the prison and its large but disorganized Muslim population. Malik doesn't get to choose sides: The Corsican leader, César (Niels Arestrup), solicits Malik's aid in murdering an Arab informant who has been briefly transferred to the prison on his way to court and then informs Malik that, since he's in on the plan, either he kills the informant or César will kill him. Malik must proffer oral sex and then, when his target's guard is down, slice his jugular with a razor blade hidden in his mouth.

It doesn't go quite so smoothly, but the killing, conducted in the cramped quarters of a prison cell, retains a horrible intimacy — an approach that serves Audiard, as well. Although the movie stretches over more than two and a half hours and several years, it sticks to the details and avoids mythologizing its hero; Audiard has called it his "anti-Scarface."

Anti- or no, however, A Prophet too closely follows the outlines of the up-from-the-streets gangster movie to convincingly subvert it. It's a gritty, accomplished take on the genre, and newcomer Rahim's terse, muscular performance makes for a forceful debut. But it's genre film nonetheless, falling into rote patterns that are only slightly disrupted by a brief foray into the supernatural. Audiard has said he believes Malik may represent "a new type of human being," but his film doesn't follow suit.