Mubi Monday: The Sisters Brothers (2018)

A bit of a change of pace for director Jacques Audiard, The Sisters Brothers is an enjoyable dark comedy Western that benefits immensely from two central performances from Joaquin Phoenix and John C. Reilly.

The two play the titular brothers, men who end up on a quest to chase down two men (played by Riz Ahmed and Jake Gyllenhaal) who may be on to a winning formula for gold prospecting. They encounter difficulties along the way, of course, caused by people who want to end their lives, and the excessive drinking of Charlie.

Although featuring all of the usual things you expect to see in a Western, this is atypical in the way the characters are shown and the situations developed. Our two leads are not on some honourable quest, for example. They are being sent after men by a figure known as The Commodore (Rutger Hauer). Loyalties change, character flaws are not fixed in any major moment of redemption, and you never expect anyone to ride off into the sunset.

Reilly and Phoenix may not be two actors you would think of pairing up as brothers but both work really well in their roles, with the former being slightly in the shadow of the latter, although both can step up to the mark when guns need drawn and the bullets start flying. Ahmed is very good as the young man out to make his fortune with brains over toil, and Gyllenhaal is equally good as the man who does his best to stick close to him. You also get a good selection of supporting players, with enjoyable turns from Rebecca Root, Allison Tolman, and the smallest of roles for Carol Kane.

The script, co-written by Audiard and his frequent collaborator Thomas Bidegain (based on the novel of the same name by Patrick DeWitt), is strong. Characters are fleshed out very quickly, with more being added to them as the plot winds from beat to beat, and there are some cracking lines of dialogue (a favourite of mine being Phoenix talking to the citizens of a town named Mayfield).

The direction is also strong, as you may expect if you've seen anything else from Audiard. He keeps everything feeling firmly rooted in the genre while giving most scenes enough of a little twist to make it all feel slightly different from the norm and fresh. There's also some typically wonderful music throughout from Alexandre Desplat (another favourite collaborator of Audiard) and some nice cinematography throughout from Benoît Debie, making a lot of the more unpleasant moments seem more palatable.

8/10

Here's a disc.
And Americans can get it here.

A Prophet (2009)

Directed by Jacques Audiard (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Thomas Bidegain, based on the original incarnations of the tale by Abdel Raouf Dafri and Nicolas Peufaillit), A Prophet is an absolutely fantastic crime movie that mixes in some great characterisations with some Machiavellian moves, some moments of thoughtfulness with explosive violence and  equal amounts of hope and despair.

Tahar Rahim plays Malik El Djebana, a young Arab man who is sent to a French prison and tries to keep himself to himself. That doesn't last long, however, and once the head prisoner, Cesar (Niels Arestrup), asks him to do a job for him he is then dragged in to more and more schemes that involve him learning all about the criminal politics in and out of the prison. Malik watches and listens to everything and learns a hell of a lot, something that helps his self-preservation as the situation being created by Cesar and his underlings becomes increasingly dangerous.

It's a very traditional tale in many ways, the youngster who enters the criminal world and swiftly rises through the ranks while facing ever-increasing challenges and risks. What separates A Prophet from 101 other movies on the same subject is the way it nicely walks a line between something cinematic and something that feels very real. The other unique ingredient is the race of the lead character and how that feeds into the storyline, an essential factor in just how he can interact with certain groups and gain each foothold that he seeks.

The script is excellent and the direction from Jacques Audiard perfectly judged. Things move along at a brisk pace but there are tense scenes in which time slows right down, with every second vital as Malik weighs up his situation.

All of the cast do an excellent job. To honours go to Tahar Rahim but Niels Arestrup easily shares the top spot. Adel Bencherif, Jean-Philippe Ricci, and Slimane Dazi are also very good, along with absolutely everyone else who appears onscreen.

A Prophet is one of those movies that is actually quite hard to review in the blog format. I could either sum my feelings up for it in the first paragraph and leave it at that or I could explore every detail of the movie and create an essay going on for thousands of words but that's not the format for my blog so I'm going to settle for this middle ground with a review that I hope, as usual, gives enough information and "flavour" to people who may then check out the film and enjoy it for themselves.

9/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/A-Prophet-Blu-ray/dp/B0036TGJX4/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1346794016&sr=8-3