A Prophet review

 Number 389 on the top 1000 films of all time is the 2009 French prison-drama 'A Prophet.'

Malik El Djebena (Tahir Rahim) is a French-Algerian petty criminal who is sentenced to six years in jail. Naive and alone, he soon falls under the sway of the ruling Corsican gang led by Cesar Luciani (Niels Arestrup.) At first Luciani and the others look at him as nothing less than an annoying bug, but Djebena soon rises to the top of the prison hierarchy.

A Prophet was a brutal and unflinching look into French prisons. I always say that you can't shy away from difficult subject matter like this - you either have to go hard or go home and A Prophet definitely goes hard. It's no surprise that it was nominated for the Best International Film Oscar. While it ultimately lost to the the Secret in their Eyes, it won the equivalent Bafta, the Best Film Cesar as well as further awards at Cannes. In many ways it reminded me of the equally brutal Midnight Express.

Sure, you can argue that petty criminal Malik El Djebena isn't the most likable of protagonists - he's in prison for a reason and once there he commits further crimes like murdering the other inmates, but Tahir Rahim moulded him into a very interesting character. In some ways, he is reminiscent of Michael Corleone from the Godfather films - he begins the film as an outsider to the criminal world, but finishes as its uncontested king. 

Tahir Rahim has the same acting talent as Al Pacino, as he won the Cesar award for Best Actor. Rahim took Djebena on a fascinating arc from a teenage boy haunted by his past crimes, including murder, to the kingpin of the prison.

Every bit his equal was Niels Arestrup as Cesar Luciani - the hitherto king of the criminal underworld. He strongly reminded me of actor Brian Cox bringing the same level of grounded intensity. Luciani was an unpredictable character - in a second he can go to sharing a joke with you to digging a spoon into your eye, as Djebena found out first hand - it was this unpredictability that made him so frightening. Arestrup helped to keep this villain scary without turning him into a cartoon.

If I were to criticise this film for anything it would be its title of "A prophet." Sure Djebena does demonstrate some prophetic tendencies like helping to avert the car he's in from crashing into a deer, this doesn't happen until midway through the film. This idea of him being a prophet didn't seem relevant enough to justify titling the film, but this is a minor criticism.

A Prophet was an uncomfortable but thrilling movie with great performances from its lead actors. Also, can we just talk about how interesting the Corsican language is? A language, similar to the Tuscan-dialect of Italian, being spoken on a French island? Amazing.

Match Point review

 Number 568 on the top 1000 films of all time us Woody Allen's psychological thriller 'Match Point.'

Spoilers ahead

Christ Wilton (Jonathan Rhy Meyers) is an Irish former professional tennis player who marries into an upper-class English family. However, he risks everything when he starts an affair with his brother-in-law's American girlfriend Nola (Scarlett Johansson.)

Let's start with the Jonathan Rhys Meyers-shaped elephant in the room. Chris Wilton is Irish. It's a big part of his character. It's his nickname at one point. Meyers is Irish. Why does Meyers play the character with an English accent? It made no sense.

Anyway...I have seen a few Woody Allen comedies in my time and I have never been a fan. Judging from Match Point, I'm not a fan of his dramas either. He originally conceived this with an American cast and setting, but after failing to get funding, he reimagined it for an British setting and cast. The only exception was Scarlett Johansson who was a last-minute replacement for Kate Winslet.

Match Point divided critics with the Yanks loving it and Brits hating it. Guess what side I fall down on? It doesn't surprise me that American audiences loved this film; it has everything they know and love about British cinema, or think they know and love: good-looking men like Matthew Goode and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, posh English accents, afternoon tea, London landmarks, black taxis and upper-class people doing upper-class things like clay-pigeon shooting. it was like Allen had a list of criteria he needed to hit, I was half-expecting to see Dick Van Dyke singing about cleaning chimneys.

Allen's script was not good. The dialogue was clunky and unnatural with the English characters speaking in American English - Wilson says he was buying a sweater when any other English person would have been buying a jumper. Never mind a silver spoon, it was like the characters were walking around with dictionaries in their mouth. Plus, the plot was rushed. Chris and Nola have an instant-love connection with no catalyst prompting their illicit affair. neither of their parents didn't do anything to deserve being cheated on, not that anybody ever does, but it did make their relationship even more shallow.

Yet this wasn't all down to Allen. Granted the cast wasn't working with the best of scripts, but their performances were not good. Meyers was creepy, Johansson was whiny and annoying - the two of them had no on-screen chemistry at all, and Emily Mortimer, who played Chris' wife Chloe, had all the charisma of a ham sandwich. I understand that she was supposed to be boring, or, at least, too boring to interest Chris, but we saw little evidence of this, before he starts sleeping with Nola.

At two hours and five minutes, this was Allen's longest film, but it could be have been fifteen minutes shorter. The film culminates in the most half-arsed police investigation ever. After Nola falls victim to the surprise pregnancy cliche, Chris is caught in a dilemma to leave Chloe for her or to keep living his double-life. He does neither. He concocts a hair-brained scheme to shoot Nola's neighbour and then her and then stages the scene to look like a drug-fuelled burglary. 

Despite the flaws in his plan, despite how the ghostly apparitions of Nola and her neighbour appearing (the less said about this the better) appear to Chris taunting him about being caught, despite how Chris carelessly drops a piece of incriminating evidence on the script, despite how the police call him in for questioning, despite how everything paints toward him getting caught, he gets away with the crime scot-free.

One of the policemen solves the crime in his dream and is sure that Chris is lying, but is easily persuaded otherwise by his colleague. It's all just ridiculous. it was like Allen was worried he didn't have enough conflict for the final act, so he shoe-horned in this silly police investigation, which he knew wouldn't go anywhere.

Match Point was like every American's wet dream about British culture. But as is often the case, the dream is nothing like the reality. Tennis is a key theme of the film, but Allen served up a complete dud. A while ago, I wrote an article about films that should not be on the top 1000 films of all time. If I were to write another list, Match Point would surely be at the top.