In American cinema there are enough prison movies for there to be an entire genre shorthand by which the audience can predict what's coming next. Even if you've never stepped inside a real prison, it only takes a few years of cultural intake to understand how prison stories are told in American cinema. As a result the genre has become a bit boring. Those moments that are supposed to be shocking, like orchestrated inter-prisoner violence, come off as rote and the whole exercise seems pointless. That's why Jacques Audiard's French-language prison drama A Prophet is such a unique experience. Taking place in a French institution populated by both Muslims and Corsicans, the film provides a cultural backdrop that is fresh for American audiences as well as a take on prison they likely haven't seen before.

Tahar Rahim stars as Malik El Djebena, a lifetime delinquent who grew up on the streets and finally found himself in prison after committing a crime as an adult. Malik begins the story mostly illiterate and completely alone in the world. When a key witness against a Corsican criminal transfers to the prison, the leader of the Corsican gang, an old man named Luciani, forces Malik to kill him under the threat of death. Thus begins Malik's transformation from an aimless cast-off to a mastermind of the French underworld.

Central to Malik's development is his identity crisis of being a non-Muslim Arab who has found himself working for the Corsican mob. It's clear from the beginning that the Corsicans have a particular hatred for Arabs, so Malik quickly finds himself ostracized by the Muslims at the prison and permanently rendered omega among the Corsicans who protect him. His only connection to Arab culture and to the world outside the bars of his cell is a man named Ryad. Ryad is a short-term inmate who teaches Malik how to read and gives him his first leg up in society. When Ryad gets released early for cancer treatment, Malik is given a trustworthy avenue to operate on the outside without anyone knowing what's really happening.

The most unusual element of Malik's story is his occasional release from prison. This is generally known as a Release on Temporary License, a practice that, while not unheard of in the United States, isn't very widely practiced. It's made clear in A Prophet that Malik only gets his releases so easily because Luciani has so many lawyers and judges on his payroll, but the idea is still fairly foreign for Stateside audiences. Basically, Malik's story wouldn't work in an American setting. In fact, the general condition of prison life as depicted in A Prophet seems overly permissive by American standards. Any number of luxuries and freedoms in the movie would be completely unbelievable in any film set in the United States. If nothing else, this makes A Prophet feel like a genuinely foreign film instead of a French take on American prison movie cliches.

A Prophet received accolades throughout the independent film circuit and it has one of the higher overall ratings at Rotten Tomatoes. It's certainly a strong film, though it's a touch too long and it doesn't commit to many of its stylistic flourishes enough, which ends up making the little edits and jumps that appear throughout feel random and poorly thought out. The acting is solid and unlike the desensitizing fare of American prison movies, its violence is genuinely disturbing. If nothing else, A Prophet is a film that presents audiences with a number of generally under-represented groups and eases them into their place in society with little hand-holding.