A Prayer Before Dawn

Prison hell set in a Thai prison!! Prison movies did very well last year (both Shot Caller and Brawl in Cell Block 99 were great additions to the genre), but this one clearly wins this year. The protagonist is a British boxer who lives in Thailand, gets into drugs, deals them himself and ends up serving a sentence in a local famous prison, where, by the way, real prisoners feature instead of actors. In Rotten Tomatoes it's 100% with an exclamation mark and I applaud and follow on those ratings. Of all the prisons I've seen in movies (British, American, Danish) the Thai one is definitely one of the worst. They all sleep on the floor like animals in one room crammed next to each other, newcomers are raped on camera, and it's not a pretty sight at all, I can tell you. It has a very realistic and authentic tone to it, the Thai poker-faced prisoners are unpleasant to look at. Brutal and ugly things happen, the very atmosphere of the unusual setting is perfect and it has a brutal effect on the viewer. Joe Cole's performance is very convincing and the Muay Thai prison fights are also very good to the eye of the fans (but the fights themselves are not that impressive). A bleak gem based on a true story! 85% (07/23/2018)