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Nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language film, Jacques Audiard’s prison drama is being compared to THE GODFATHER and the comparison is warranted. In taking a new perspective on the gangster genre, the gripping film deals with issues of being an Arab in France and the reality of rehabilitation. Prison rarely makes a person a better person only a better criminal.

Malik El Djebena (Tahar Rahim) is a 19-year-old delinquent who gets six years for fighting with cops. Whether he deserved it or was being targeted for being an Arab is left open ended. But it doesn’t really matter, because this scrawny kid is now in with the big boys. He’s petrified and it shows on his face. Before too long, he is mugged for his shoes. When he tries to fight back, he just gets beat more. However, his guts don’t go unnoticed… and that’s not a good thing for him. Corsican gang boss Cesar Luciani (Niels Arestrup, THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY) makes him an offer that he can’t refuse — he must kill the snitch Reyeb (Hichem Yacoubi, AZUR AND ASMAR) or be killed.

Malik isn’t a murderer, but he is a survivor. He tries to get around the dilemma, but he quickly learns that Cesar controls the prison and has eyes and ears everywhere. Malik becomes Cesar’s slave and his window into the growing Muslim prison population. Malik keeps his head down, stays quiet and, most important, listens. He learns the gangster business from Cesar and his crew. Later, he meets Ryad (Adel Bencherif, FRONTIER(S)), a Muslim gang member, who helps him learn to read and write. Then he hooks up with gypsy drug dealer Jordi (Reda Kateb). Soon Malik is making is own deals behind Cesar’s back, while Cesar sets up Malik to do dangerous missions for him after the prisoner receives leave privileges for good behavior.

Working with Thomas Bidegain from a screenplay by Abdel Raouf Dafri and Nicolas Peufaillit, Audiard crafts a tight drama with the same tension he brought to his wonderful thriller READ MY LIPS. The plot is populated with classic gangster archetypes with an unlikely anti-hero in the center. At first, Malik gains our sympathy because he’s a man with a conscience forced to do amoral acts. Then, we come to respect him for his resourcefulness. Malik looks like a weakling on the surface. He walks the line between the fractions of the prison. The Arabs view him as a Corsican lackey and the Corsicans look down on him as a dirty Arab. In the world of the prison, there is talk of rehabilitation but with corruption at every level (the prisoners refer to the guards as hacks) the only jobs the prisoners have learned have nothing to do with sewing jeans. But Malik never lets any opportunity slip him by and works both the legal and illegal systems.

To embrace Sufism and the Dervishes, the story works in flashes of mysticism. Malik is often visited by a ghost. The sequences add uneasiness and sometimes a sense of humor to the harsh story. The fantasy scenes also add another dimension to the title. Once Malik is initiated into prison life, he sees his future clearly.

Malik and Cesar’s relationship is unique. Cesar is like an ogre king ruling over his domain. While he has numbers in jail, he has difficulty dealing with his businesses on the outside as one could expect, so be acts like a pitbull to those around him. Becoming obsolete might be his biggest fear. After years in the system, Malik gets a sense of invincibility, which can quickly make you vulnerable in prison. The same can be said of Cesar. He orders Malik around like a child, but because he is dutiful and an outsider he trusts him. There’s great irony in their relationship. But can they really trust each other?

As the pieces of the plot come together, Malik seems to have too many balls in the air. We wait for one to drop. The question is whether Malik has the foresight to see it coming and knows what to do when it does. The powerful last shot says a lot about who he has become and who he always was.