Sometimes a film has to underwhelm before it can satisfy. Building on the success of 2005’s The Beat That My Heart Skipped, such has been the critical acclaim garnered by Jacque’s Audiard’s latest that at first it appears simply unable to live up to the hype. Lazy comparisons to Jean-Pierre Melville or The Godfather haven’t helped. A Prophet may be long, French, and include Mediterranean gangsters, but its largely uncinematic, observational feel has more in common with recent films such as The Hurt Locker than either of these – in fact, one of its most admirable characteristics is that it constantly avoids giving you the film you’d expect.

One wouldn’t necessarily infer this from the story. A young French Arab, Malik El Djebena (a breakthrough performance by Tahar Rahim), begins a six-year prison sentence. A chance conversation with a fellow inmate brings him to the attention of the prison’s ruling elite, a group of Corsican crime-bosses led by the patriarchal César (Neils Arestrup, admittedly looking something like a grizzled French Don Corleone). After his brutal forced initiation into César’s circle, Malik’s subsequent ascent of the Corsican crime hierarchy allows him to pursue his own criminal agenda, using the people and information he comes into contact with on the inside to play off various sides against each other for his own profit.

Yet even as Malik’s interventions in the outside world become increasingly complicated, the film’s extended running time makes what would traditionally be climactic twists seem like just more episodes, and it is a testament to the scriptwriters and editor that this tactic doesn’t slip into torpidity. Instead, through allowing the story and characters to develop at a relatively lifelike pace, such a flattened, linear progression actually enhances the film’s impact, provoking a constant unease regarding just how it will end up. The unfussy cinematography also helps this, refusing to draw too much attention to any particular moment or scene, and exercises enough self-control to come across as realistic without seeming overly messy or ugly.

Often, it is the careful manipulation of documentary-like aspects which really betrays Audiard’s skill: a particularly memorable example is Malik’s lingering over signing a legal form, his near-illiteracy brought uncomfortably to the fore. The film’s sound design often has the same effect: early scenes present a progression of half-indifferent, half-commanding bureaucratic voices, whilst the prison itself is a constant background of taunts and shouts echoing blurrily along the corridors. Outside, an incoherent tannoy constantly chastises inmates in the exercise yard – conveying well a world of authority present but almost always ignored. The naturalistic performances are generally strong, with Rahim’s strikingly believable performance conveying well his character’s mix of the tense, the vulnerable and the uncomfortably complicit. Meanwhile, Arestrup memorably imparts both his expectant ferocity and ultimately embittered dejection: an unsuccessful public attempt to catch Malik’s attention yields surprising pathos, Arestrup looking like an unwanted fifth-best-friend across the schoolyard.

Yet amidst all this, Audiard periodically introduces elements which seem bent on deliberately undermining the lifelike tone: thus at various points we are presented with a ghost, Tarantino-esque chapter titles, more typical gangster-film montages, two almost Lynchian visual sequences, not to mention Alexandre Desplat’s self-consciously cinematic music. These have mixed results: although they admirably prevent the film from becoming too monotonous, only in a few cases do their contributions seem to really add something beyond this, and the better elements – the various apparitions and hallucinations – feel too spasmodic and underused to fulfil their potential.

It is to Audiard’s credit that he manages to make all this realism, magic realism, and apparent self-reference co-exist quite effortlessly. Overall, the conflicting aspects and subtle shifts in direction seem like part of the general refusal to give you the film you expect; the intention is admirable, but the film’s story and construction simply aren’t original enough to prevent this seeming like a substitute for being truly innovative. This is not to say that A Prophet is not worth seeing: the end-product is well put-together, thought-provoking and becomes increasingly compelling as it progresses. It succeeds well on its own terms; whether it has much lasting impact will remain to be seen.

Three stars 

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Friday: Balliol at Night – Charlie Guo

Thursday: Equus – Ollie Ford

Wednesday: Purple Sky – Jenny Attwater

Tuesday: Behind the scenes in Christ Church kitchens – Ollie Ford

Monday: Polish Representation at the European Affairs Society’s European Food event – Adrian Krajewski

Sunday: Trust – Michelle Tan

Saturday: Oxford Imps at the Wheatsheaf – Sonali Campion

Wayward Theatre’s production of Macbeth promises to be a unique and original retelling of the classic Shakespeare tale.

Director Ellen Davnall explained her intentions in setting the story in a soon-to-be contemporary environment of a suffocating, embryonic police state to translate the worries and fears of the supernatural held by the Shakespearian audience to the modern world.

The production will make effective atmospheric use of the performance space, with set design by Nele Dieckmann and lighting by Mike Bedington accentuating the O’Reilly’s feel as a lecture hall rather than a dramatic theatre, and emphasising the fluidity of the scenes.

The intimate setting may or may not prove to be a success: if every actor manages a performance as nuanced and intelligent as Jonnie McAloon’s Ross, the production’s sparse design will speak for itself, making Macbeth an exhilarating experience.

However, the interpretation could be let down by one or two scenes lacking in understanding and commitment to the Shakespearian text. Jack Blackburn’s powerful yet physically inhibited portrayal of Malcolm would do well to lend some of its sensitivity to Rory Fazan and Rafaella Marcus’ scenes as Macbeth and his Lady.

Although both performances could at times be gripping and emotive, there was a tendency to rely on violent shouts and deranged whispers to bluntly convey their characters’ emotional complexities. Audience reaction in such an exposed setting should also contribute to the actors’ individual performances, which may yet come to life in Third Week.

It will be interesting to see the director’s interpretation of the three witches as political dissidents, and on the whole, Macbeth has the appeal of a fresh, challenging and socially resonant production.

Three stars

Macbeth is on at the O’Reilly Theatre, 2-6 February at 7.30pm

Based on the 1985 British miniseries of the same name, the film explores the horrifying secrets of a nuclear power company whose shady misdeeds are endorsed and hushed up by the US government.

While it feels as if Emma is not actually alive on-screen long enough for this to be a deep and probing look at family relationships, there is nonetheless well-acted and convincing emotion. Craven, as a strong-and-silent type with little left to live for, could quite easily have come across as shallow as a puddle on a summer’s day. Mel Gibson’s performance was, however, very engaging, and Thomas Craven was a well rounded character with more emotional depth than you might expect. However, there was perhaps not room in the story to successfully convey the struggles of the overly-enigmatic Darius Jedburgh (Ray Winstone) with his conscience and mortality. He has been sent to ‘clean-up’ any evidence of law-breaking at Northmoor, although never quite clear who employs him, or what in fact he is supposed to be doing except for fretting and popping prescription pills. Although Winstone’s performance is good, the character is overall slightly unnecessary and painfully close to interesting.

The film’s 15-certificate is apparently due to “strong bloody violence”, and Edge of Darkness does not disappoint in that respect. While the level of violence most probably won’t give you nightmares, a word of warning: as I found out to my cost, and much to the amusement of the man sitting next to me, it’s not the best film to watch if you have an aversion to vomit.

While this is not an unmissable film, and does not have the most original plot in the world, I would still recommend it for those who really enjoy a good crime thriller. Within its genre, this film ticks all the boxes. I jumped out of my seat a few times. Gibson broods for about 112 minutes out of 116, there’s tense music, a fist fight or two, more uncomfortably loud gunshots than I could count on both hands, and at one point a baddie’s car pirouettes into a lake. In slow motion, of course.

By the end I felt as if the conclusion had been quite a long time coming and that perhaps, it hadn’t really been worth waiting for. Overall, however, the balance of action, tension and understated dry wit is just about perfect, in a genre that can so easily churn out laughably over-the-top moments. Don’t get me wrong, there are some wonderfully cheesy cop-thriller lines – for instance, Craven: ‘I’m the guy with nothing to lose’, and Sanderson, CEO of Northmoor: ‘you are out of your depth and far from your jurisdiction’. But the film ultimately keeps its dignity, and you do come away with the feeling that it is very well made indeed.

3 stars

Readers who have had their Shreddies this morning will be keen to point out that this column is here for exposing underrated genres, and that I am abusing it no end by writing about a single author. True. But then just what genre will contain all of Orhan Pamuk, a writer at once simple and yet so complicated?

He is simple because he uses for his material the basic building blocks of human existence: cigarettes, raki (a foul aniseed spirit ubiquitous from Athens to Alexandria) and love. Simple, because in many of its truest points the Turkey he writes about could be anywhere. Simple, because he can reduce sprawling reflections on time or human suffering to the kind of words that an illiterate housewife would use. Simple, above all, because at rock bottom he is a storyteller.

Scratch the surface, however, and you will see a vast depth of thought and learning. From the little bricks of common experience Pamuk builds great architectures of feeling that stretch from the tabloids to Aristotle. My Name is Red is at once an electric thriller and one of the most lucid expositions of Islamic art theory I have ever read. Snow, a novel about fundamentalist Islam in Turkey’s easternmost reaches, has the feel of a film noir and the intellectual weight of an Economist leader. When he gives free reign to his vigorous erudition and intellect in his topography of Istanbul, the result is up there with the very best travel writing.

Pamuk also enjoys reflexive writing, playing in the shadowland between the writer’s life and his work. The White Castle dramatises the discovery of its own manuscript in a loft, while My Name is Red names characters after the author and his little brother. The Museum of Innocence takes this further: it features a greenhorn writer with bad nerves by the name of Orhan Pamuk, while Pamuk himself is apparently building a real-life version of Kemal’s fictional museum on the very site marked on the book’s map. Categorise that, if you will…

TO TRY: My Name is Red