Jacques Audiard’s Un Prophète has been called a French Goodfellas, combining elements of the prison movie, the gangster film, and the coming of age story all at once.

This Goodfellas tag is kind of a marketing ploy.  Watching the movie never reminded me of the Scorsese classic.   No, Un Prophète is something different.  Though sharing some thematic elements with Goodfellas, it in fact reminds one more of Malcolm X, in that it is a story about a naive boy being transformed, nay, re-born in prison into a knowing leader of men.

But don’t get it twisted.  Un Prophète is not a religious movie.  It is not about Islamic Jihad or any theologico-political movement.  It is a film about a young man of ambition, a man on the rise, a man with a dream.

Audiard stated that the film aims at “creating icons, images for people who don’t have images, the Arabs in France.”  The most celebrated film coming out of the annual Cannes Festival this year, the honors given to this remarkable Franco-Italian collaborative production have been well-deserved (Un Prophète won the Grand Prix at Cannes, best film at the London Film Festival, France’s own Louis-Delluc prize for best film, and France’s submission for the 2010 Oscar for Best Foreign Film). Undoubtedly, it is an excellent film.  But it is more than that.  It is really something special to watch.

With all its strengths, the greatest asset of this movie is arguably the incredible performance by its lead actor, Tahar Rahim.  It is through the eyes of Rahim’s character, Malik, that the audience experiences the film.

A native born Frenchman of Algerian heritage, Rahim is a new face in European cinema, and in my opinion, one of its greatest young acting talents.  The skill, power, and total immersion into character of his performance reminds one of the best work of the young Robert DeNiro or Daniel Day-Lewis.  Indeed, his performance garnered him the best actor’s prize at the European film awards.

Un Prophète literally chronicles Malik’s life in prison, from the day he enters until the day he leaves. The film treats Malik’s entrance into prison as the birth of a new life.  In the opening sequence, as Malik and the other new inmates are introduced to prison, the film’s perspective is as a baby being born into a state maternity ward.

Initially, everything is dark.  Out of this blackness, our ears are assaulted by men barking orders from every direction.  A state of confusion is created in the viewer.  Suddenly, a small pinprick of light breaks the obscurity and very slowly expands until it permeates the screen.

Slowly, our eyes are able to focus.  Our hero is naked, frightened, helpless, and defenseless as a newborn.  An interrogator asks him simple questions about himself that he can hardly answer.  The only two things he seems to know about himself is that he is an orphan and that he speaks Arabic fluently. 19 year old Malik stands in front of us as a tabula rosa, a blank slate.

Unaffiliated and unprotected, Malik quickly comes under the thumb of the local Corsican mob chieftan, César Luciani, played by veteran actor, Niels Arestrup.  Arestrup is mesmerizing as the Franco-Italian gangster.  Equally important is the excellent chemistry between Arestrup and Rahim as actors, because the evolution of their relationship drives the film.

In a typical American gangster film, the tendency is to celebrate the hardness of the criminal-hero. We admire and cheer for the ruthlessness by which he disposes of his enemies, whether with the cold calculation of a Michael Corleone or the fiery passion of a Tony Montana.  We know they are fallen men, tragic victims of the very strengths that have made them successful thugs, but we support them anyway.  We find the tragic flaws that ultimately damn their lives and souls endearing, and we accept their faults as if they were an old friend.

Rahim plays Malik as a very different type of criminal-hero.  He is not a “tough guy”, like the Corsican mobsters.  He does “tough guy” things, but maintains a kind of angelic glow about him.  Moreover, Malik’s character is able to retain this halo throughout his progress from errand boy to the Corsicans (they call him the “Arab dog”) to gang leader.

I highly recommend Un Prophète.  Fans of American gangster and prison films will not be disappointed, and I suspect they will be intrigued by the subtle differences in the way a French filmmaker approaches these genres.