A Prophet feels about 5 hours long, and as the running time is under 3 hours this is decidedly not a good thing. I suppose that for what the film is, it is, technically speaking, “pretty good”. The story just has this feeling that it’s never, ever going to end! I mean, no one loves a slow, thorough movie more than me, but this film quickly crosses a line and starts to feel like we’re watching a 24 hour web cam, through which we observe these filthy, disgusting assholes living their revolting prison-lives in excruciating, mind-numbing detail. New plot lines keep coming up and it feels like nothing is getting resolved. When you spend most of a movie wishing it would end, that really tells you something about the artistic merits of what you’re watching.

Plus let’s face it: gangsters are SO FUCKING BORING!!!. They have no emotional range, they have bad skin and greasy hair, they pull people’s eyes out with spoons, and all they talk about are things like “I want you to hit so-and-so”, or “everything you are is because of ME!”, and on and on and on. Christ, who could enjoy watching this crap?

The main character is almost completely unlikable. He’s ugly, he’s stupid, and he’s basically pretty evil. And boy do we get a mouthful of this greasy little turd. We watch him kill people, we watch him jerk off to porn and fuck whores in prison, we watch him serve food to people and wash windows, we watch him kiss the ass of the fat disgusting gangster that pulls the strings in the prison. I ask you, honestly: does this sound like fun?

I can’t condemn the movie outright, because A) we didn’t turn it off, and B) it can’t be denied that the film is very detailed and even somewhat stylish. But the bottom line is it’s a bunch of thugs in prison, acting in a way that makes it very clear that they really deserve to be there. Just not the kind of movie you return to again and again.