A Prayer Before Dawn

Prison fighting films might seem like a niche genre but there's loads of them out there. In Hell, Penitentiary, Death Warrant, Pit Fighter, numerous Undisputed films and even Out Of Sight touched on it. There's a guilty pleasure to be gained from watching men, trapped like animals, fighting it out amongst themselves while we sit on comfy couches a million miles from the grime trying hard not to think about why we enjoy this violent spectacle. A Prayer For Dawn slots perfectly into this film category while simultaneously standing head and shoulders above it. It's an assault on the senses. That is the only way to describe the it. You'll feel like you've been kicked in the head when the credits roll.

Billy Moore was a small time criminal and boxer from Liverpool who in a bid to escape his demons and his former life ran to Thailand only to find himself sinking into the mire there as well. After a drug bust he ended up slung into Klong Prem prison and here he found himself on the very bottom rung of the prisoner hierarchy. Being a pale redhead in a foreign prison made him stand out and his skills with his fists and a ferocious will to live were his only way of surviving.

This sounds like a Van Damme film doesn't it. Kickboxer crossed with the aforementioned Death Warrant. Death Boxer if you will. Better than Kick Warrant anyway. Which in fairness would be a fun film but nothing compared to this one. It's a blistering watch. A brutal, nauseating, terrifying, scalding look at culture not only alien to most of us but one that's unimaginable as well. Like Billy we're dumped into at the deep end. The lack of subtitles makes us as lost as him and it puts the audience squarely in his shoes. It makes for very immersive viewing. The intense and intoxicating sound design and roving camera of director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire force us to nearly suffocate on what we see and hear. If you watch this because you liked The Shawshank Redemption.......well you've got a reckoning coming.

You'll nearly smell the odor when Billy is dumped into a small cell with 50 other men. You'll definitely feel his fear when he tries to go to the toilet on his first night and witnesses the kind of thing that burns itself into your mind forever. As the film moves on though we slowly learn the to's and fro's of prison life and things ease up a bit. A bit. Subtitles become more common and you'll allow yourself to breathe a little easier. Then amazingly, in a moment you would never see in an American production, the film even finds time for a small slice of tenderness. That's not the say the film ends on an easy note. Oh no. But here it turns into something we've seen before. Which isn't a bad thing, just a step down from what we experience in the earlier part of the film.

All the cliches of prison life are here and get ticked off one by one. Corruption, gangs, violence, sexual violence, goods smuggling and so on. All the cliches of a fighting film are here too. Training montages, first losses, victories, acceptance, injury. All the stuff we've seen a million times in Rocky films. It's all done so well though. That first 30 minutes or so is nightmare inducing stuff, the kind of intro to life behind bars that would put you on the straight and narrow forever. Joe Cole who plays Billy puts in an amazingly primal show too. There's no stunt doubles, it's all him. The script mightn't call for much dialogue but goddamn he shows some serious skill in and out of the ring. A one take round of Thai boxing is brilliantly done, the camera bobbing and weaving like the fighters but in a way that doesn't call attention to itself like a similar moment in 2015's Creed. Every slap of glove on skull, shin on solar plexus, every splash of blood. You experience it all. You may have guessed by now this ain't a film for the weak of heart. 

A superb performance from Cole is the centre of the film. His character Billy a hard one to love from the start but as the film moves forward you'll oddly start to empathise with him even when he falls back into old ways. His humanity starts to shine through and a smile from him about 2/3's of the way through genuinely feels like a breath of fresh air. A lot of this is down to his burgeoning friendship with a transgender inmate called Fame, played by Pornchanok Mabklang in a striking turn, she's the one person he can find solace with and be open to. Their scenes are a much needed bit of relief in an otherwise bruising movie

You'll be relieved when it's over but you'll be glad you watched this. It transcends it's genre roots to become something special. Yes it eventually caves to predictability but it's all so well done you just won't care.  Be wary though because it fully earns it's 18 certificate.