A Prayer Before Dawn (2018) Review!!!

Synopsis – The true story of an English boxer incarcerated in one of Thailand’s most notorious prisons as he fights in Muay Thai tournaments to earn his freedom.

My Take – A big reason why boxing films such as Rocky are so successful is because audiences love stories of triumph, of personal development and of justice served. We all just love to root for the underdog, the demeaned and oppressed. However, this film from French director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire, who returns to the big screen a decade after the release of his last film, the Africa-set international breakthrough Johnny Mad Dog, has something else in mind, despite the premise sounding like something that would star a younger Jean-Claude Van Damme. Here, the triumph of Rocky is mixed with dreadfulness of Midnight Express, along with all of the personal appeal of the former and the terror and alienation of the latter.

Based on the 2014 memoir of Billy Moore, a British boxer who was imprisoned in Thailand for drugs offenses. Before being transferred to a British jail he spent three years in a Thai prison; it is that time that is covered here. Being the only foreigner in a notorious Thai prison, director Sauvaire uses the fact that Moore could hardly understand Thai, let alone speak it, to make this a refreshingly non-wordy affair and every shot reflects Billy’s state of mind, who is played here by Joe Cole, who turns in a star-making performance of savage physicality. And as much as I recommend this film for its cinematic achievements, I must also say that this film isn’t for everyone. Why? As a brutal assault on the senses, there isn’t a single moment that allows the viewer to think “chill it’s only a film”.

Set in 2007, the story follows Billy Moore (Joe Cole), an amateur British boxer, who while living in Thailand, also deals in drugs, while getting high himself. Upon being arrested for the possession of methamphetamine and weaponry, he sentenced to a term in Thailand’s most notorious jails, Bang Kwang Central Prison. Unable to speak the language, friendless and alone, Billy witnesses all manner of horrors; rape, murder and suicide are commonplace and, caught between the corrupt guards and his brutal fellow convicts, he finds solace in the arms of trans woman Fame (Pornchanok Mabklang) and temporary escape in the drugs supplied by corrupt officer Preecha (Vithaya Pansringarm).

Repeatedly suffering the indignity and humiliation and isolated by the overcrowded cells he soon realizes he has to take charge of his own destiny getting to know that cigarettes are prison currency but better still is learning to fight and take part in the prison run Muay Thai fighting tournaments which will earn him favor with the prison governor and ultimately could get him his freedom. But as the hope of freedom glimmers, Billy realizes his greatest opponents are his own demons.

Here, director Sauvaire tells a story about Bangkok’s seedy underworld that most tourists don’t often see. The anti-drugs message is severe and the price to pay is extreme, but as a real life story told with conviction, the film is about humanity’s most defining virtue of persistence even in the most hellish of places. And he is very sparse in his storytelling, as his lead actor isn’t given much to say, there’s no context of any characters’ backgrounds, no surrealist or stylish flourishes, and the simple shooting style is close-ups and long takes, often in conjunction.

Yes, at times, it feels undeniably sketchy, but then again Sauvaire evidently has the bigger picture in mind, and is prepared to overlook in-the-moment minutiae for a broader feeling of total sensory immersion. This gritty realism helps director Sauvaire tap into the hunter-gatherer instincts of man, a dominant theme of his picture, as the film is a striking story of pure survival. There are no good or bad guys, no one can be trusted, and one has to use the tools they have in order to survive. The film is stripped clean of extraneous information, with few personal details included – a letter from home, for example, goes unshared; this is about Billy’s prison experience pure and simple. He also combines the traditional tropes of the prison film and the thankfully less familiar factors to follow the misery inflicted on Billy, which usually exacerbated by his hot temper, is appalling. For example, during his first night in, Billy is held with a knife to his throat and forced to watch an act of gut-wrenching, nerve-rattling brutality, which director Sauvaire uses to set the tone for the rest of the film where it remains consistently bleak and unapologetic.

It’s a grim and searing assault on the senses that finds hope in one man’s capacity to survive and even thrive in truly nightmarish conditions. While the love and drugs provide Billy with some respite in an environment where there are no bars – the convicts sleep next to each other looking like the longest row of fallen human dominoes. The routines and rituals of prison life and the boxers’ training regime create an almost hypnotic spectacle, and special attention is paid to the bodies of the inmate and his fellows, focusing the camera between muscled shoulder blades – on side profiles, bruised knuckles, tattoos, and shaved heads. Do keep an eye out for the scene in which the boxing team gather around Moore as he gets his first prison tattoo – it is a wordless, but very powerful, expression of comradeship.

Director Sauvaire and screenwriters Jonathan Hirschbein and Nick Saltrese aren’t interested in playing up any action potential or exploitation angle for this story. Beyond simply being a drama, the closest genre it touches on is the crime film, as the various intricacies of the prison’s inner workings play a big part in the story; former cellmates threaten to kill Moore over unpaid debts, if he fails to win a match, compelling him to continue to compete, despite the diagnosed threat of a ruptured stomach as a result of his sparring and substance abuse.

Coming to the fight scenes, they are as realistic as I’ve seen, leaving you feeling exhausted and pummeled. The initial fight sequences, before being locked up, are cut quickly and numerously and because of that they are very disorienting, possibly a considered decision to reflect Billy’s state of inebriation and lack of focus. But the following brutal kickboxing scenes are slickly assembled and heavy on the atmosphere with the cheering crowd looking on with blood in their eyes. Billy’s training scenes are a stark contrast to the trumpet blaring training montage in any of the Rocky films. That’s because this film isn’t about the glory of winning a fight but solely about staying alive. Which is why this film is first and foremost a survival film, followed by a blood sport film as a close second.

Somewhere along the film’s two-hour run-time, Cole‘s Billy transforms from a beat-down British expat to a fighter releasing his fears and frustration into every explosive blow with brute force. Much of the film was shot on location in Thailand, with a cast comprising real ex-gang members and criminals, which affords its naturalistic inside-the-prison-walls approach, and the self-assured directing is even more impressive given the film’s modest budget.

However, this film does earn itself some criticisms. For a film running under 120 minutes, it feels slightly drawn out. Despite being promoted as a boxing film, it’s almost half way through before Billy rediscovers his love of boxing in the prison, and there’s still a good deal of training to go before the final fight. But when it comes, the victory is highly subdued, there is no rousing homecoming or prison-wide celebration, depriving the film of the desperate need for an uplifting ending. Although very engrossing, it is also feels rather unstructured.

As Moore appears to be the only Western prisoner; the addition of an English-speaking pal to whom he could speak, would have helped the audience understand what was going on in his mind. Adding to the confusion, the Thai dialogue are not always translated, although this may be a device to highlight Moore’s own bewilderment as to what is going on around him (in which case, it does succeeded). The pacing, however is a bit slow at times and with no dialogue to push things along it can drag and slightly ends up feeling directionless.

Nevertheless the film deserves a watch, especially for Joe Cole‘s knockout performance. Originally intended to be portrayed by Charlie Hunnam, it is a blessing that he was replaced by Joe Cole, who we last saw in the Hang the DJ segment of Black Mirror, delivers a staggering performance as the troubled young Billy. In a mostly foreign-language film, Cole’s performance is heightened by his ability to speak without the aid of words, and for a baby-faced thirty year old, he delivers a remarkable impression of a deeply troubled, desperate drug addict with a frightening and unrelenting temper. In a supporting role, Pornchanok Mabklang, who plays the transgender Fame, despite being non-actor leaves a strong impression. Thai actors Vithaya Pansringarm and Panya Yimmumphai are good too. On the whole, ‘A Prayer Before Dawn‘ is a brutally gripping and a painfully dark film that delivers a blow with its shocking, uncomfortable and harsh story telling.