A prayer before dawn review – kickboxing Thai prison epic goes the full Midnight Express

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 ain’t, you slags, it’s 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 isn’t stone-cold dead already, you can lay pretty good odds he’ll have hung himself by the morning. And on top of all that, the food’s lousy too.

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Billy, it transpires, possesses some decent boxing skills, together with the junkie’s art of wheedling favours out of people who wouldn’t otherwise give him the time of day. Before long he’s 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 he’s schooled in the sweet science of punching and kicking people to a pulp, and enjoys the added perks afforded to the jail’s 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 – wouldn’t you know it? – Billy’s literally fighting for his life.

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