Tahar Rahim is a Prisoner at 100 miles an hour (critic)
In this British series which begins this evening on Canal+, the French actor plays a hitman forced to flee. A devilishly effective action thriller.
Twenty years after being locked up in A Prophet, Tahar Rahim escapes… or almost.
With Prisoner, a new British thriller in English, to be seen this evening on Canal+, the French actor plays Tabor, a killer on the loose. But don’t think of it as a rehash of The Fugitive: Tabor is not an innocent person unjustly accused. He is a real assassin, who agreed to testify against a powerful boss of the London underworld. A betrayal which makes him the target of his former employer, on the verge of being condemned by British justice. When the convoy charged with taking him to safety is attacked in a tunnel, Tabor runs away… with one of the agents responsible for his transfer still handcuffed to his wrist. They will have to learn to trust each other to hope to survive.
On this classic but remarkably executed premise, Prisoner never seeks to reinvent the action thriller. The series is presented as a permanent race. A pure gripping series, with blunted story lines, but with exciting tension.
It’s better not to always try to understand: the twists and turns do the trick and the entire success of Prisoner rests on its main duo: Tahar Rahim imposes his magnetic presence, while Izuka Hoyle offers him a perfect counterpoint in the role of the prison officer embarked on this run against her will.
Compact, tense and perfectly aware of its limits, the series – already renewed for a season 2 – prefers to go straight to the point.
Prisoner really isn’t very original. But in the muscular thriller genre that never stops, it proves to be fearsomely effective.
