If you were among the many who thought highly of “A Prophet,” the French prison drama that played here last year, you’ll want to see the brutally realistic Danish thriller “R.”
This time the focus is on Rune (Pilou Asbaek), a young man with surfer-boy good looks, who is sent to Denmark’s most notorious prison for some violent crime.
It takes just a few hours for Rune to discover that there’s a pecking order among the convicts, and he’s on the very bottom.
That means the other inmates — mostly grungy tattoo freaks — turn him into an errand boy they can abuse mentally and physically any time they feel like it.
One of his “errands” is to knock out a stoolie’s teeth, a job he does too well.
Rune’s fortunes look up when he and an Arabic convict named Rashid (Dulfi Al-Jabouri) — with the unwitting help of Rune’s granny — come up with a way to smuggle drugs within the prison. But Rune and Rashid’s good luck isn’t to last.
“R” is directed by two Danes who used to make documentaries, Tobias Lindholm and Michael Noer.
That’s one reason the film has a quasi-doc feel. Another is the use of former cons and guards for most of the roles. Who knows better about prison life than someone who has experienced it firsthand?