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Storyline
Billy Hayes is caught attempting to smuggle drugs out of Turkey. The Turkish courts decide to make an example of him, sentencing him to more than 30 years in prison. Hayes has two opportunities for release: the appeals made by his lawyer, his family, and the American government, or the "Midnight Express". |
The Director
Alan Parker
Sir Alan William Parker, CBE (born 14 February 1944) is an English film director, producer, writer and actor. He has been active in both the British cinema and American cinema and was a founding member of the Director's Guild of Great Britain.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Alan Parker, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
Video Reviews
User Reviews
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Un Prophète
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Normally a film that includes graphic shots of a man getting his throat cut in the first half hour would have a hard time getting more than a 0 rating from me. But this one is different.
Tahar Rahim plays Malik El Djebena, a naïve 19 year old French (probably French/Algerian) guy who ends up in a tough French jail for assaulting a policeman. We don't get to find out much about what brought him to this point, although there are hints that he didn't get the best start in life. We do get to see how prison changes him.
With echoes of 'Papillion' and 'Midnight Express', he finds himself in a prison world divided into two camps - the Corsicans and the Arabs. The Corsicans hate the Arabs, and the Arabs hate the French. Malik is hated by the Arabs for being French and hated by the Corsicans for being Arab. That is, until the Corsicans find a use for him.
Un Prophète is one of five films nominated for Best Foreign Film in the 2010 Oscars, and there are many aspects that makes this film deserving of the nomination.
First, it is many different stories-within-a-story - and each one works. It is a political commentary on the relationship between Corsica and the French mainland, and on the tension between Arab and Corsican populations in France. It is also a story of friendship, loyalty, and conscience. And at the heart of it all, it is the personal journey of Malik, who evolves from an innocent boy into a street-wise man. Second, Un Prophète does a great job of describing moral complexity. Jail is supposed to rehabilitate offenders, but Malik commits far worse crimes in jail than out. He learns to read and write, but he also learns the drug trade. He enters pri...
View full review
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reviewed by cliodhna (Filmaster.com) on the 3rd of March 2010
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