The Scorsese of contemporary French cinema

Critics praising Jacques Audiard's French crime film "A Prophet" have compared it to everything from Martin Scorsese's "Goodfellas" to Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather." But the film's closest spiritual cousin might actually be rapper M.I.A.'s hit single "Paper Planes."

In that subversive chart-topper, M.I.A. uses a pleasantly summery beat and a catchy gunshot-and-cash-register-sampling chorus to accompany lyrics about third-world thugs who rob and kill tourists. The point of both the song and Audiard's film isn't to endorse criminal behavior, but to show that the angry, disenfranchised lower classes of the world always find ways to survive - even if it means they have to create a capitalism based on bullets instead of bailouts.

It's a lesson that comes through forcefully in this enthralling and nuanced film, which focuses on Malik (Tahar Rahim), an illiterate young man who enters jail on a vague, unspecified charge. Cesar (a terrifying Niels Arestrup), the Corsican mobster who effectively controls the prison, quickly seizes upon him. But this Arab in a white-dominated French institution is much smarter than he initially lets on, and he learns fast; pretty soon, he's constructing a criminal enterprise of his own, playing prison factions against each other and engaging his boss in a power struggle of Shakespearean proportions.

There's a certain familiarity to this story of a Gallic "Scarface," but the film is more than redeemed by the direction of Audiard, whose past thrillers ("The Beat That My Heart Skipped," "Read My Lips") only hinted at the mastery he brings to bear here. Audiard achieves something quite extraordinary in "The Prophet": He tells an epic story largely in terms of individual physical sensation, employing a brutally tactile filmmaking technique that evokes the gritty feel of every situation. This is evident throughout the film in scenes as diverse as when Malik tortuously attempts to stash a razor blade in his cheek, or when he forgoes having sex on the beach in order to soak his toes in the surf. Audiard merges micro and macro detail in a way that resembles a less romantic version of Terrence Malick's work or Steve McQueen's "Hunger."

Audiard is equally adept at weaving together the many other strands of his film, which range from his graceful explication of the prison's Byzantine political machinations to his allegory of Arabs clawing their way toward respect in France by any means necessary. All of this comes through without any romanticization - despite the repulsive, near-Cronenbergian depiction of violence and the surreal haunting of Malik by a ghost of one of his victims, the film never loses sight of the moral stakes involved.

These stakes are illustrated most movingly through Rahim's star-making performance. With his sub-Tom Cruise stature and narrow features, Rahim may seem like an unusual center for a gangland epic, but it isn't an exaggeration to say that his work rivals that of a young Robert De Niro. De Niro's Vito Corleone in "The Godfather Part II" is a clear touchstone for this role, and we see the transformation take place on Rahim's face as his character progresses from a state of innocence to one of ruthless, calculating knowledge of his world.

Audiard has said that his title isn't meant to have religious connotations and is meant to refer to Malik as "a new prototype of criminality," or a ruthless adapter between cultures and languages. This isn't necessarily a new idea, but rarely has the process of a man being molded into something different been shown in such exquisite detail.

Late in the film, when a furloughed Malik goes through a routine airport security pat-down, this prisoner, so used to invasive strip-searching, reflexively sticks his tongue out. It's a nice moment of comedy, but it's also a haunting depiction of a man in progress - progress toward something rather ominous, as the final shot so affectingly suggests. Luckily for us, "A Prophet" also represents the deserved progress of Tahar Rahim toward world stardom and of Jacques Audiard toward a place among the finest contemporary directors in world cinema.