Michael Corleone, meet Malik El Djebena. I think you’ll find you have a lot in common, especially seeing how you both were so adamant about avoiding the thug life before fate and circumstance dictated otherwise.
I know, you subscribe to different religious faiths and are wide apart in your levels of literacy and sophistication, but I see you both as men of strong wits and even stronger instincts.
People tend to underestimate you, too. They think you’re too soft for the business of killing and betrayal, but I suspect your bloodied victims are not of that mind. Just ask Fredo. Oh, wait …
You’re also a pair of fast learners who are quick studies in using your soft, handsome looks to disarm enemies and win their misplaced trust. And, of course, you’re both featured in Oscar-caliber movies: Michael in “The Godfather” and Malik in “A Prophet.”
Now, you two, why don’t you talk among yourselves and compare body counts while I explain to the rest of the folks out there why you and your movies deserve mentioning in the same breath, beginning with the obvious fact that both your stories are riveting.
They are also cautionary, especially what they say about society and its treatment of immigrants. But more than that, they are representative of the entrepreneurial spirit needed to make crime pay.
Of the two men, it’s Malik (marvelous newcomer Tahar Rahim) who faces the harder struggle, considering his operating base is a French prison. Or, as I like to call it, grad school for criminals looking to move on up.
And Malik couldn’t have a tougher, more demanding professor than Cesar Luciani (Niels Arestrup), the jailed leader of the Corsican mob. Like with Michael’s dad, Vito, Cesar makes Malik an offer he can’t refuse.
And all Malik need do is stick a razor in his mouth and in the middle of getting romantic with a fellow inmate, slip the blade between his teeth and drag it across the other guy’s jugular.
Thus, amid the puddles of blood, a crime star is born, not to mention a movie icon, ala Scarface. But don’t make that comparison around co-writer-director Jacques Audiard, who thinks Al Pacino’s infamous mobster is nothing but a showboating nut job.
Malik, on the other hand, is stoic, calculating and extremely intelligent despite being illiterate. Like a sponge, Malik soaks in everything he sees and hears and then files it away for future reference.
