Based on the true life account by Billy Moore, Jean-Stephane Sauvaires bloody, brutal film follows a British drug addict as he fights for survival
Reality-check for anyone who thought that life inside a Thai prison was a nice bed of roses, some kind of holiday camp. A Prayer Before Dawn is here to tell you that it aint, you slags, its actually a right bloody nightmare. There are fights in the yard and sexual assaults in the toilet. You have to sleep on the floor, packed in like sardines, and if the man beside you isnt stone-cold dead already, you can lay pretty good odds hell have hung himself by the morning. And on top of all that, the foods lousy too.
Obviously Im prepared to take Jean-Stephane Sauvaires film at its word, not least because its based on the bestselling memoir by Billy Moore (embodied here by Joe Cole), a young British drug addict who spent three years inside the notorious Klong Prem prison and then came out to bear witness. A Prayer Before Dawn duly goes full Midnight Express in its depiction of these horrors, right down to the savage inmates, brutish guards and the indecipherable shrieking when the lights go out. In its better moments, though, it also bears comparison with Jacques Audiards Un Prophte, another tale of a supposed lamb-to-the-slaughter who, against all the odds, found a way to survive and then thrive.
Billy, it transpires, possesses some decent boxing skills, together with the junkies art of wheedling favours out of people who wouldnt otherwise give him the time of day. Before long hes won the support of Fame (Pornachanok Mabklang), a fetching trans convict who provides the cigarettes which he then uses to bribe his way onto the boxing team. Once there hes schooled in the sweet science of punching and kicking people to a pulp, and enjoys the added perks afforded to the jails pugilists, like glass in the window and a table to sit at. But the battles take their toll and his old bunkmates want paying. And now wouldnt you know it? Billys literally fighting for his life.
If those opening scenes werent punishing enough, the bouts arent in the business of providing light relief. Sauvaire doesnt skimp on the violence or glamourise its delivery: electing to frame the fights in painful long takes, with much mauling and gasping and spitting of blood. Emerging victorious at the end of one tussle, Billy steps ringside to let a prison surgeon run a needle and thread across his tattered left ear.
A Prayer Before Dawn is playing as one of Cannes midnight screenings, the graveyard slot where the organisers like to send rough-hewn interlopers, deemed unfit for polite company. Chances are the film is going to fit in very nicely. No one would accuse it of breaking new ground, or finding fascinating new paths across its well-worn prison yard. But Sauvaires drama is lean and trim and unwavering in its task. You know its moves; you can see it coming. But when the punches are thrown, they rock you back on your heels.
