A sort of Prisoner’s Progress, a brutal and brutally long account of a young Muslim naif who enters a French penitentiary on unspecified charges, gets recruited by the Corsicans as a double agent to knock off a fellow Arab, and from there climbs up the criminal ladder as a man without an ethnicity. The Corsican and Muslim factions make a welcome change from their stereotyped American counterparts — the Hispanics, the blacks, the white supremacists — and there’s a good deal of informative and interesting material on the French penal system (e.g., twelve-hour day passes to do mischief on the outside), and yet there’s no great narrative skill in getting it across, only a good deal of murky approaches, unclear connections, loose ends. At times a pitch of intensity is reached, but that seems to be an effect more of the hyperventilating music of Alexandre Desplat than of any control of the throttle by director Jacques Audiard (Read My Lips, The Beat That My Heart Skipped, tepid thrillers). The performances by mostly unknowns, chiefly Tahar Rahim and chiefly excepting the characterful character actor Niels Arestrup, are nicely contained, in the French style, dedicated to team goals instead of individual glory; and the gritty, frigid, moldy-green image fits in with the overall intent of giving the moviegoer the lowdown if not quite giving him a movie, a diversion. The carrot at the end of the 150-minute stick is a haunting rendition of “Mack the Knife” by the inimitable Jimmie Dale Gilmore. (2009) — Duncan Shepherd
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