The first great film of 2010: ‘A Prophet’

Ever since Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola joined forces to create the ultimate mafioso myth, known everywhere as “The Godfather” trilogy, filmmakers have been trying to update the story. All have had varying levels of success.

Until now. With his Palme d’Or-winning film “A Prophet,” French filmmaker’s Jacques Audiard has given us a worthy successor to Coppola’s magnificent achievement. Not that the two are in any way similar in style. But in theme? In the power that each has in terms of pure cinema? “The Godfather” and “A Prophet” are of a kind.

Actually, Audiard’s film, which he cowrote with Thomas Bidegain - both working from an original script by Abdel Raouf Dafri and Nicolas Peufaillit - is a blend of several films. There are the obvious references to “The Godfather,” but you can see bits of Brian De Palma’s “Scarface,” Matteo Garrone’s look at Napolitano crime “Gomorra,” and the HBO series “Oz,” too. Add in your typical European mock-documentary-style of hand-held, in-your-face cinema, along with some choice example of magical realism, and, voila, you have what may be a modern masterpiece.

Audiard’s story centers on the young hood Malik (Tahar Rahim), a mixed-race kid of Arab extraction who seems to have been raised by wolves. All we know is that he has no family and, for a time, has spent time in one institution or another - mostly juvenile criminal facilities. We meet him just as he has been convicted in adult court of, it seems, attacking a police officer.

As his court-appointed attorney tells him, while making sure that the kid signs his bill, he’s made the big time now.

Which is exactly where he finds himself, alone, friendless, in the prison yard, prey to anyone who wants his sneakers or smokes. We know he’s not without spirit because he’s willing to fight, even when outnumbered. But we also know that, unless something happens, his days are numbered.

That something comes from the prison powers, a group of Corsican mobsters led by the grizzled, graying Luciani (Niels Arestrup). Needing to hit a potential witness, Reyeb (Hichem Yacoubi), Luciani targets young Malik as the perfect weapon. He’s Arab, Reyeb seems to like him and he’s powerless to resist the force that Luciani can bring down.

Malik tries to resist. But Audiard is skillful at showing us just how limited his options are. And we cower along with him in his cell, torn between the ultimate of unyielding rocks and harder than hard places. No movie sequence I can recall is better at showing the desperation a character can feel in such a situation, not even the famous restaurant scene in “The Godfather” in which Michael Corleone confronts the man who tried to kill his father.

But in a foreshadowing, Malik does what he’s told - WARNING: THE SCENE IS GRISLY ENOUGH TO MAKE “SAW” SEEM LIKE SOMETHING FROM THE NICKELODEON CHANNEL - and his fate is set. He becomes a pawn of the Corsicans, who offer him protection, and he gradually begins to thrive.

Ultimately, in fits and starts, he begins to build his own organization. Over the course of the film’s two-and-a-half-hour running time, he - like Michael Corleone and Tony Montana of “Scarface” - shows a survivor’s ability to negotiate between different entities. Other mobsters, say, and the prison’s Muslim brotherhood. And when he can’t get others to do his bidding, he proves capable enough on his own.

A scene in which he, with pistols in both hands, attacks an armored SUV full of Italian mobsters is as powerful as any such scene I’ve ever had the pleasure to see. And Audiard, audaciously, tells it in real time, playing with the sound to show the effects of gunfire on the human ear and slowing things down, dreamlike, to take us as far into the moment as possible. And then Malik emerges, surprising us, and maybe himself, by making just the right decisions.

For most of the movie, Malik fits right in with the brutality around him. Even so, he does show shades of conscience. The spectre of Reyeb stays with him for the longest time, proving to be a kind of consigliere, until he is no longer needed. There are sequences - on the beach, the first time on an airplane - where a slight smile reminds you of Malik’s youth. And he is kind to his friend’s wife and son, which Audiard uses actually to close his film, giving us both sides of the Malik who has emerged.

That ultimate character is not a nice guy. He’s a mobster, just as Michael Corleone and Tony Montana are, and his days may be just as numbered as those mobsters he has displaced. Youth, as always, will triumph in the end.

But watching him survive in the Darwinian world that Audiard has created is a cinematic treat. “A Prophet” is one of the best films that I have seen in a long time. It may be the first great film of 2010. Maybe even of this new, infant decade.

Below : The trailer for “A Prophet.”