A Prophet / Un prophète (Jacques Audiard, 2009, France)

It's not that there's anything terrible about Jacques Audiard's mostly realist drama about a young Arab man's struggle to assert himself during his 6 years within the confines of a French prison. It's that there's not much that truly stands out as fresh or original about it, either. There's something generic about it. This is almost standard crime fare, from start to finish.

And, it's kind of a mess.

Whereas the film's pacing is certainly admirable (it wasn't too terrible sitting through its 2.5 hour run time), it's not exactly action packed. There are some tense moments, as when Malik carries out the execution of another prisoner (played by Hichem Yacoubi) to earn the protection of Corsican prison boss César Luciani.

The Guy Ritchie inspired transitions (each w/ a non-standardized textual stamp- a character name, a stretch of time, or simply a seemingly apropos turn of phrase- which doesn't necessarily have much to do w/the impending film sequences) seem like a cop out here, a replacement for more interesting or creative character introductions or plot elements with which writer/director Audiard and his cohorts could not be bothered.

The performances are pretty good, save for the terribly sentimental testicular demise of Ryad (Adel Bencherif), which is just silly.