A Prophet (2009)

aka: Un Prophète

Foreign / Crime / Drama

2 hrs. 29 min.

A young Arab man is condemned to six years in a French prison where he rises up the ranks to become a mafia kingpin.

Rated R for strong violence, sexual content, nudity, language and drug material

Directed by: Jacques Audiard

Starring: Niels Arestrup, Hichem Yacoubi, Gilles Cohen, Antoine Basler, Leila Bekhti

Theatrical Release Date: 2/26/2010

Release Type: Limited

U.S. Box Office:

Video/DVD Release Date: 8/03/2010

Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics

Country: France / Italy

Language: French / Arabic / Corsican

Offsite: IMDB | Official Site

CRITIC	RATING	QUOTE
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert	9	...becomes a young man's bleak, remorseless coming of age story.
Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips	8	...a violent and gripping French film trafficking in both gangster mythology and the prison picture.
filmcritic.com Chris Cabin	7	...the fourth film by the Parisian-born Audiard and though I'm reluctant to call it his strongest, it is by every possible measure his most ambitious and his most fully engrossing.
New York Post V. A. Musetto	8	...startling...
Slant Magazine Nick Schager	8	...a familiar tale of illicit enterprise that's enlivened by taut, gritty filmmaking punctuated by flashes of poeticism...
Rolling Stone Peter Travers	10	...a new crime classic.
Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum	10	...a stunning portrait of an innately smart survivor for whom prison turns out to be a twisted opportunity for self-definition.
New York Times Manohla Dargis	9	...one of those rare films in which the moral stakes are as insistent and thought through as the aesthetic choices...
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan	10	...really is the movie that reminds you why you love the movies. Especially movies like this one.
LA Weekly Rob Nelson	5	...deficient in form and content -- not naturalistic so much as neutered, less revisionist than rote.
Village Voice Rob Nelson	5	...deficient in form and content -- not naturalistic so much as neutered, less revisionist than rote.
Onion AV Club Noel Murray	9	...has been compared to American TV series like Oz for its episodic plot and large cast, but it’s more like a Gallic Goodfellas: thoroughly absorbing, exciting, even poetic. It's a full evening's entertainment.
Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer	8	...has a real raison d'être – it takes the Gallic crime movie genre into new socioreligious terrain.
Variety Justin Chang	9	...solid, sinewy pulp fiction...

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ALL AVERAGE CRITIC RATING	8.2
AVERAGE USER RATING (2 ratings)	7.0