film An offer he can't refuse: Tahar Rahim and Niels Arestrup in A Prophet

Directed by Jacques Audiard. Starring Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup, Adel Bencherif 16 cert, Queen’s, Belfast; Cineworld/IMC Dún Laoghaire/ IFI/Light House/Screen, Dublin, 150 min

This scorching French prison drama is a masterpiece, writes DONALD CLARKE

IT IS TO the credit of Jacques Audiard, director of this stunning French prison drama, that you barely notice the film has a political point to make.

A Prophetbegins with Malik (Tahar Rahim), a young Arab, arriving at a brutal, unwelcoming French jail. When the warden mentions his supposed crime, Malik, with nervous testiness, asserts that he didn't do anything. Maybe he's lying. But one interpretation of the story offers us an entirely innocent man being pushed towards violent crime – at first reluctantly, then with some zest – by the irresistible politics of prison life.

However, as I say, nobody would mistake A Prophetfor a sober musing on penal injustice. Audiard, already lauded for superb thrillers such as The Beat That My Heart Skippedand Read My Lips, grabs the viewer by the gullet in the opening seconds and maintains his grip for two-and-a-half busy, gruelling hours. Early suspicions that the young director might make a worthy successor to French masters such as Jean-Pierre Melville and Henri- Georges Clouzot – the guys who forged art from suspense – have proven to be well founded. Why has it taken so long for the film, unveiled triumphantly at Cannes last May, to make its way into cinemas?

Within days of Malik’s induction to the prison, he runs up against César Luciani (Niels Arastrup), the ruthless, morose godfather of the institution’s Corsican contingent. Luciani, a saggy, aging pile of flesh, doesn’t much enjoy the company of Muslims, but he feels compelled to make Malik an offer he can’t refuse: murder a neighbouring prisoner or be killed himself.

In a scene rich with dread and horror, Malik, after making a feeble attempt to get thrown into solitary, hacks the poor fellow to death with a razor blade and begins his descent into crime and near sociopathy. He becomes a dogsbody for Luciani and agrees to carry out increasingly dangerous tasks while on day release. Then, as he becomes more comfortable with the lifestyle, he begins to harbour thoughts about usurping Luciani’s position.

As is often the case in gangster films, our revulsion at the anti- hero’s immorality is consistently overpowered by our admiration for his ambition and by our guilty excitement at his growing capacity for violence.

Among the wonders of Tahar Rahim’s bone-rattling performance is his ability to simultaneously reveal Malik’s fear and guilt without clarifying quite how far his moral journey has taken him. Is he a minor criminal drifting into the big league? Is he an ordinary man turning into an extraordinary villain?

By pointing out his initial near- illiteracy, Audiard allows us to see the fiercely intelligent Malik as a Tabula rasaawaiting either malign or beneficial mentoring. But no man gains adulthood without acquiring character. These various ambiguities forcefully argue the case for a second (or third or fourth) viewing.

Indeed, there is so much to savour in A Prophetthat you half fear for Audiard's future. How do you follow up something so fecund? The supporting performances, many from non-professionals, allow even minor characters some traction

with the viewer. The spooky, quasi-supernatural elements – ghostly visits from Malik’s first victim, the apparent prophecy that provides the title – lend the film an unsettling, otherworldly quality that contrasts pointedly with the gritty reality of the prison.

The marginalisation of the Muslim characters' religion challenges white viewers' clichéd views of such personalities' role in crime cinema. All this and powerful action sequences that make recent acclaimed European gangster flicks such as Gomorrahand Mesrineseem a tad pallid by comparison.

Barring one of the greatest years in cinema history, one spot in next December’s top 10 is already taken.