Review of A Prayer Before Dawn (2018) by John M — 15 Oct 2018

And you thought American prisons were bad. So based on true events, this is about an English boxer (Joe Cole) who is serving time in an infamous Thai prison. Incarcerated life over there is no joke, and he may not survive even if he plays his cards right.

He's a boxer, so he must fight. Now when I say I knew very little about this going in, I mean it. It worked its way on to my queue because I saw it on a Best of the Year... So Far list when I was surfing the web, and I had done zero research on it.

Once I learned that this was about prison boxing, I suppose you could say that I was hoping for something like the inspired Brawl in Cell Block 99. A Prayer Before Dawn is way more grounded in reality, and I have to say that I prefer the former.

Now even though I only have limited experience, I do consider myself to be a fan of the boxing movie, or at least when it is done right. I love Rocky, and I enjoyed Creed. Why not this? Well, at risk of sounding like a bad person, I didn't really care as much, and that may have had something to do with this being based on a true story.

The man that you're following, he's kind of a blank slate. You don't really get to know him before he gets incarcerated, and there isn't all that much reason to root for him, other than the fact that he is the person that you happen to be following.

Joe Cole gives an extremely physical performance in an overly brutal role, and that does deserve credit, but at the same time, I was never given anything to latch on to, as he is only made likable when you consider the fact that he is surrounded by hardened criminals and the scum of the Earth.

A Prayer Before Dawn is hard to watch and a bit of a chore to make it through. It is always raw and unpleasant, and another issue I had with it is that it is that it doesn't have too much of a range to it; this story is constantly hopeless, so you never really feel like the protagonist is going to have much to live for even if he makes it out alive.

I think that the film is decently made and nightmare-esque as you see these prison conditions where humans are packed in like testosterone infused sardines. I would be remiss if I failed to mention that I reached a point where I stopped caring, and this fell right in the middle of the road for me after all the positives had been added and all negatives subtracted.