Local film-maker Boo Junfeng's psychological drama Apprentice, about a young prison officer called Aiman who gets taken under the wing of a prison executioner, has received good reviews in the United States, where it was released yesterday.

It was a critics' pick in The New York Times. The review said: "At first, Apprentice seems to be a basic revenge film in which Aiman stalks the man who killed his father. But it becomes psychologically more complex."

The Village Voice noted: "Drenched in darkness and routinely visualising its characters behind bars and alone in the frame, Apprentice teases a climax of bloody revenge, only to take a far more sombre, complex turn.

"In a finale rife with twisted feelings of resentment, fury and self-loathing, the film transforms into a grave meditation on the corrosive shadow cast by the decisions, and crimes, of yesterday."

The movie had its world premiere at Cannes Film Festival last May in the Un Certain Regard section.