A Prophet

This film is complicated, I can’t remember if its Tony Montana or one of the godfathers who says “you gotta work the angles”, for one thing, here keeping up with who is allied with who is a challenge. This is in many ways quite similar to Scarface, a man with nothing works his way up through the ranks of the criminal underworld and eventually buys a tiger for his mansion. Ok he doesn’t do that last bit, this is far more gritty and thought provoking, but what really makes this film brilliant is not the acting or the cinematography, though both are spot on, but the metaphysical element to it all. As a crime story it works well, but this has a little more, I won’t say specifically what, but it is as much about how it might feel to be an incarcerated criminal as anything else, as well as encompassing things like identity, the meaning of freedom and what ties people together. As I said, its complicated, but that is what makes it a brilliant film.