Враг общества номер 1 2008

How do you recover from an American project that was received with mixed reactions to say the least (that would be the Assault on Precinct 13 remake)? Easy: go back to your home country (in this case France) and devote time to your real passion project, the one that can give you bona fide director credentials. That’s exactly what Jean-François Richet did with Death Instinct, the remarkable first part in a two-movie story about famous French criminal Jacques Mesrine.

Like most other biopics, the film opens with the protagonist’s death, and what a spectacular demise that is: gunned down by unidentified shooters in the middle of a crowded Parisian street. The story then flashes back to the early ’60s, when Jacques (Vincent Cassel) returns home after a harrowing tour of duty in Algeria. Looking for work, he learns an old friend of his earns money on the side by carrying out certain «assignments» for a heavyweight (pun not intended) criminal known as Guido (Gérard Depardieu). At first, it’s all fun and games, exotic holidays and beautiful women. Then, once Jacques gets married, his wife isn’t quite happy with his lifestyle. The thing ends badly, and Mesrine continues his illegal career, toughening up after Guido is brutally murdered. Thus begins his successful series of bank robberies and scams that quickly lead him to becoming the most wanted man in France and prompt his brief stay in Canada. Even there, however, he just can’s stay away from trouble.

Richet is certainly no Michael Mann (an obvious reference when it comes to the robbery scenes), but he tells the story with gusto and precision, staging the tale as if it were a traditional gangster movie: taste of power, discovery of the unpleasant consequences, fight until the end to reach the top. He deals with an impressive amount of material (and this is just Part One) and handles it so that even the merely explicative bits feel tense and exciting. From start to finish, Killer Instinct moves at a reasonably quick pace, asking the viewer for commitment and endurance, and deservedly so: it’s one hell of a thrilling ride.

If one has to complain, it should be noted that the psychology of certain characters is a bit sketchy (Guido is really nothing more than the average gangster type), but that flaw is generally compensated by very solid acting. The most effective (and terrifying turn) is of course the one coming from Cassel, who was everyone’s first and only choice for the leading role, according to cast and crew statements. Returning to the more troubled side that has been left pretty much unexplored since La Haine, he digs into Mesrine’s dark psyche and re-emerges with a complex, chilling part that makes him deserving of the his widespread reputation as one of France’s best young thespians.

As for the deliberately open ending, the final captions are clever but a bit smug: after revealing the fate of characters who won’t return in the follow-up, the title card says «As for Jacques Mesrine… End of the first part». As if we didn’t know that already.

What is it with gangsters? I like watching gangster films and I don’t care what sort of gangsters they are. Something about the bravado and living the high life seems to appeal and there is always an element of charisma about them. That’s not to say I wish to be a gangster or to break the law, but the self confidence and the refusal to take sh** from anyone attitude is attractive. But, were I to be placed in a room with a genuine gangster, I’m certain I would be terrified and would want to get out of there ASAP.

The film opens with Mesrine making a decision whilst in the French army and in Algiers whether to follow his superior’s orders to shoot the wife of a terrorist suspect or to shoot the suspect. This moment, as well as establishing that Mesrine has the killer instinct of the title, shows us that he is not one for conforming to authority, as he ignores his superior and takes the shot.

From that point, the film is episodic as it follows Mesrine from petty crime to audacious criminal exploits. Each episode showcases another aspect to Mesrine’s multi-layered character. Yet, because they are episodic, some of Mesrine’s character fails to carry over from one to the next. This presents a fairly schizophrenic view of him which could well be in keeping with his real-life persona.

However, many of the episodes do provide insights into why this particular person’s journey took this particular route. Having left the army, Mesrine turns to petty crime with his friend. This leads him to more serious crime, working for a Parisian crime lord, brilliantly underplayed by Gerard Depardieu. His personal life also keeps pace with his professional ascension. He has an ill-fated romance with a prostitute and a holiday romance that becomes a marriage following a sojourn to Spain. The film also takes the time to illustrate the strained relationship Mesrine had with his parents, in particular his father. Far from coming from a broken home, Mesrine is clearly from a loving, if conservative, family. Only Mesrine’s own inner rage, reminiscent of James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, at his father’s seeming lack of courage rocks that world.

It is easy to see how Mesrine captured the imaginations of so many. His charisma, very ably aided by Vincent Cassel’s own screen presence, shines from the screen whether talking his way out of house or defiantly standing up to his brutal treatment when he is finally caught and incarcerated.

He was imprisoned and brutally treated, following a one man / one woman crime wave across the world and, as part of his escape plan he assured those helping him that he would return to break them out. It is testament to his stature that they believed him and it is testament to his word that that is exactly what he attempted. Throughout his return to facilitate the breakout, the film enters the realms of an action movie.

The exploits of Mesrine left me wondering just how much the makers had embellished, or Mesrine has embellished for that matter – the film is based on his memoir, or did this guy really do these things?

There is one thing that I do know about Mesrine: I can’t wait to see part two!

www.writeronthestorm.wordpress.com

It’s the story of gangster Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) from 1959 to becoming known as Pubic Enemy #1 in 1972. In 1959, he’s a French soldier forced to kill a prisoner. Upon his return, he and his friend Paul start robbing and working for gangster Guido (Gérard Depardieu). He marries Sofia (Elena Anaya) and have a family. He gets imprisoned. He’s struggling with his marriage. He finds a fellow criminal soul in Jeanne Schneider (Cécile De France). They rob a mob casino and leave for Montreal. In 1968, he befriends FLQ member Jean-Paul Mercier (Roy Dupuis). Mesrine and Schneider are arrested in Arizona and extradited back to Quebec as the new Bonnie and Clyde. In prison, Mesrine, Mercier, and others make an escape and go on a crime rampage.

This semi-biopic has so much material to go through. It’s an epic that deserves six seasons of big-time violent brutal crime TV drama. This two hour movie feels compressed into a highlight reel of the his gleeful descend. Vincent Cassel is terrific. He’s able to maintain the focus with the rotating cast of characters. It needs focus in terms of story but it’s a very compelling character.

Richet’s Ma 6-T va cracker is a legend and his Carpenter re-make Assault on Precinct 13 is a fluent and explosive action update. Clearly an accomplished filmmaker with a flair for violence, he was evidently attracted by the sheer ambition of this project but also the complexity of a gangster who, flourishing at the time of the Red Brigades and Bader-Meinhof, came to think of himself as not just an outlaw but a revolutionary, who wrote two autobiographies, and thus provided material for film-making that would be both layered and epic.

This double biopic, part one in 113 minutes and part two 132 minutes, resembles Soderbergh’s Che diptych. It too is neither a feature nor a mini-series, but a vanity project, a labor of love devoted to an ambiguous hero that’s hard to market and unsuited to normal theatrical distribution patterns. Both parts are saddled with the biopic burden of a churning chronology and an ever-shifting cast. It’s rather conventional and heavy-handed (though mostly successful) in its use of Marco Beltrami’s loud surging studio music to augment excitement and heighten suspense. But it’s at least as three-dimensional and logically structured as the Soderbergh project, and it has a star in Vincent Cassel who was made to play this role (Richet has said that there would be no Mesrine without him) and despite pell-mell pacing endows the protagonist with complexity. The film may be accused of jamming in too much incident and allowing too little reflection but I was impressed beyond expectations.

Richet’s first part shows the formation of a super-outlaw. Mesrine’s bank robberies and prison breaks are so spectacular and defiant that he’s declared «Public Enemy No. 1» in two countries, Canada and France, officially one of the most famous and dangerous criminals in French history, a figure cops wet themselves over and women want to sleep with. Mesrine, both parts, is full of the sense of how intoxicating it is to live outside the law, and how deeply cinematic gangster life is. Vincent Cassel is charming, charismatic, and loyal to his accomplices as he is ruthless and violent, a complex and magnetic figure who keeps changing from one sequence to another.

The second part shows him playing the role, a media-savvy public icon who would seek front page coverage and give Paris Match an exclusive interview while on the run. Loud, kinetic sequences alternate with quiet ones. This is a great and challenging role for Vincent Cassel, the role of a lifetime, appearing in every scene over a nine-month shoot, 45 pounds put on, early sequences shot at the end with the weight gain. The cast is full of first rate actors, including Depardieu, Ludivine Sagnier, Amalric, Samuel Le Bihan, Olivier Gourmet, Cecile de France, and more. This is not only an impressive and expensive project with high production values and an excellent technical package. It’s watchable and well done and at the end of Part One I was eager for Part Two.

Mesrine begins as an agent of De Gaulle’s colonial ambitions as a soldier in the Algerian war. «The Marseillaise was playing when they put a gun in my hand—my hand developed a taste for guns.» Like American Iraq war vets «Jacky,» as his parents called him, came back to his well off upper bourgeois parents (they live in a château) unstable and hungry for violence. War has taught him to torture and murder. It’s also left him with a racist hatred of Arabs. His father finds him a job but he prefers to work for a fat, tough crime boss named Guido (an excellent Gerard Depardieu, so submerged in his role he’s almost unrecognizable).

Mesrine (pronounced «may-reen,» not «mes-reen,» as he later insists to cops and journalists) is fighting a war with the rich that may be a war with his own origins. A trip to Spain gets him a beautiful wife, Sofia (Elena Anaya). He’s no good as a father, but he remains linked with his firstborn, a daughter, for the rest of his life. After a stint in jail, Mesrine gets a regular job to be there for his family. But he’s laid off, and goes back to Guido. Sofia objects, and he beats her up. Sofia disappears, and the film drops that thread.

Escape from the cops leads Jacques to go to Canada with a new girlfriend, Jeanne Schneider (Cécile de France, also submerged and barely recognizable), met like the other women in his life in a bar. This one is not just a bedmate but a willing partner in crime. Denied immigration status in Canada and told to leave the country, Mesrine and Jeanne hide by becoming housekeeper and butler for a wealthy disabled man, but clashes with other staff lead them to lock him up and extort money from his son. This fails and they flee, but are extradited back to Canada from Arizona. Mesrine’s subsequent hellish treatment in the Quebec Province SPC (Special Corrections Unit), worthy of Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo, is graphically depicted. This prison and escape sequence is anchors the film. With Jean-Paul Mercier (Roy Dupuis), his Quebecois accomplice from the extortion scheme, Mesrine breaks out in broad daylight. They immediately rob two banks and, keeping a promise, return to the prison armed to the teeth and attempt (unsuccessfully, but messily) to liberate the other prisoners. After this, Mesrine is declared «Public Enemy No. 1» in Canada. He has arrived. The storytelling in this first half is breathless but compelling. It is given particular coherence and focus by the vivid Canadian sequences and the prison escape.

L’Instinct de mort debuted in Paris theaters October 22, 2008. It is part of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at Lincoln Center, March 2009.

The film opens in November 1979, Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) and his girlfriend (Ludivine Sagnier) leave their apartment. Mesrine drives past the street where he was born; not any omen to detect here, a fun coincidence at the least. His instinct fails him again when he makes way to a big truck that immediately forces him to stop. Mesrine’s usually acute sense of danger is again off. It is ironic that the man who’s been so attentive to his destiny couldn’t see the alarming signs of the last stand-off. His luck was to change and so was his status from a living to a dead legend… still, a legend.

But like frozen by some divine intuition, Mesrine seems to realize what is bound to happen, like Sonny Corleone in «The Godfather» discovering the ambush from the toll booth. He sees the girl’s Yorkshire bark at the truck, and then a firing squad (literally) aiming at him, he bulges his eyes and for the first (and maybe only) time, there is fear in his eyes, now that he met his fate, he’s finally relieved from the macho pressure and can look as weak and frail as a beast cornered by the hunter. So, the manhunt ceases with the girl’s scream and gunshots heard while the image fades out. The two-part gangster biopic of «Public Enemy number 1» and criminal legend Mesrine can start.

And starting with the death isn’t just some artistic license from director Jean-François Richet; it allows the viewers to understand why Police didn’t take any chances. It is an execution in the same cold-blooded vein than the one that ended the run of Bonnie and Clyde. Indeed, during a career that spanned almost two decades, Mesrine robbed properties, casinos and banks, kidnapped people, operated in France, Canada and Spanish islands and even jail couldn’t stop him as he revealed to be a real Houdini at four separate occasions. This is not any criminal; this is ‘LE’ criminal, one whose record has seldom been matched, not even by American legends. The risk of such reputations is to appeal the wrong way, we can despise crime while admiring Mesrine to be a sort of self-made-man who lived the kind of turbulent lives many beta males wished to get a taste from.

And Cassel’s performance is integral to this appeal that is not devoid of sexual innuendo, the risk of seeing him as a «goodfella» (Scorsese wise) is inevitable. Cassel oozes masculine charisma, with a mix of tough and gentle manners that resurrect the time of a film Robert Mitchum, he embodies in his acting this notion that great men (in terms of historical magnitude) believe in destiny and behave accordingly so. This is a guy raised in a bourgeois wealthy family with a submissive father who worked in Germany and could never take a decision without saying «your mom and I». He got his son a comfortable position in a lace factory (of all the jobs) but ‘Jackie’ has other plans: he’s an Algerian War veteran, he pulled the trigger more than once in the name of hypocritical patriotism, and can’t stand his father’s submissiveness to castrating rules, he wished he could be proud of him at least once in a scene that echoes James Dean in «Rebel Without a Cause». Jacquie was a born rebel.

When he gets the ‘call of the wild’, Mesrine establishes himself as a true natural. He’s a cocky and oddly persuasive son of a gun. During his first robbery, the house owners come but he keeps his cool and pretends to be a police officer. He is immediately introduced to Guido (Gérard Depardieu) a member of the anti-De Gaulle Secret Army, Guido grows fond on the kid and becomes his mentor, teaching him the value of respect, among many other things. And under his guidance, Mesrine makes his bones in a series of scenes that channel directors like Martin Scorsese, John Woo or Jean-Pierre Melville, without glamorizing him. Mesrine isn’t just some gun-wielding womanizer, he is racist, he knifes an Arab mackerel and buries him alive and threatens his wife and mother of three children with a gun on her mouth, if she dares to call Police. It’ll always be his buddies before her.

And this virile allegiance sets the tone for the rest of the film that can be regarded as a series of robberies, shootouts and periods in jail, something that can be deemed as gangster routine in a 2008 film, but not with the revitalizing performance of Cassel, from beginning to end. The action scenes are top notch but never as fascinating as their effect on Mesrine’s personality and his slow but inevitable descent into the crimes that don’t get you jail sentences. This is the kind of performances that are severely overlooked by international awards, but it is in the same level of Oscar-worthy intensity than Marion Cotillard in «La Vie en Rose», there’s not one second in the screen where you’re not glued to Cassel and see in the expressive eyes, such mixed feelings of anger, pride, cockiness and hammy self-awareness. It is very revealing that the words he has for the Canadian press after his arrest, is «Long Live free Quebec» echoing De Gaulle’s famous speech. Indeed, Mesrine, a born show-man, belonged to an era that forged larger-than-life characters like De Gaulle, it is only fitting that the criminal world had someone on the same dimension. There wouldn’t be one like De Gaulle, and certainly not one like Mesrine.

After all, isn’t the movie adapted from a book he wrote himself? Mesrine cared enough to leave a legacy that he wrote it himself. That a film was adapted from it says it all, and that one movie wasn’t enough to cover everything says even more about his magnitude, not just as an infamous gangster but as one of the most defining real-life figures of French recent history.

/refers to both parts/

In general, I am not much into biographical crime films/series as I tend to know the outcome and then a big and important moment of thrill is lost. On the other hand, such works include less hare-brained and fabulous scenes which purpose is to «entertain» viewers and enhance «excitement». True, Jacques Mesrine´s life was crazy enough, plus showing the weakness of Western societies to deal with hard criminals and lack of technological opportunities to protect valuables. The script here is often uneven, with some excessive dialogues followed by (too) fast chases, but the performance of Vincent Cassel is always zestful, and one can have reasonably good overview of life in some countries in the 1960-70ies. For me, a nice change for stuff happening recently or to-be happened in the distant future — if bearing in mind sci-fi films and series.

That’s the perfect kind of film that I will place as among the favourites of my movie lover life. A realistic, brutal, ruthless crime tale which recalls the story of Jacques Mesrine, the famous gangster, the intended public enemy number one.

I won’t tell you every detail of this movie, except one.

Every knows that Mesrine has fought in the Algeria war. That episode traumatized him to the deep of himself. That made him a wild beast. And when he came back, he rapidly fell into the underworld…And so on…

Of course, he hated the Arabs, and above all the «women protectors», the women slavers, hoods who lived thanks to the prostitutes. So, when one of his mistresses, or women friends — he had many -, was beaten very hard by one of those «protectors» — an Arab !!! -, Mesrine reacted

fast. Very fast. We could see his face harden itself, become a mask of stone and iron.

Guess the following…

The sequence after, when the Arab was brought into the car — driven by Mesrine — by a friend of our «hero», Mesrine watched the Arab through the driving mirror, and his mouth gave a slight smile, a cruel smile, if you considered his eyes. A smile that did not reach these eyes. Those eyes that did not smile at all. A really TERRIFYING look. Every one in the audience understood that Mesrine was going to harm this man, at the rear of the car, HARM.

REAL HARM !!!!

He was going to INJURE him.

The following two minutes are really interesting because the two main characters of the movie — Mesrine, Cassel — and his friend — Depardieu — suddenly became disgusting to the audience. In fact we realized that they were not only lovers of justice by slaying a bloody women slaver, but, above all, they were racists. F…RACISTS. They were not better than the «protector». So, in the audience, we suddenly felt some «sympathy» for the poor Arab. Just one second. We were torn between the two sides. Racists gangsters, and a disgusting mother f…who disfigured women.

Where were the good ones and where were the bad ones ???

That’s what I loved the most in this film. And, of course, the actor performance of Cassel as Mesrine is outstanding.

I wait for the second episode : L’ENNEMI PUBLIC.

*REVIEW OF BOTH PARTS*

There is a short paragraph that opens both «Mesrine» films; the exact wording escapes me, but it says something like «no film can accurately portray the complexities of a human life». This seems to be a pre-emptive defense, as if Richet anticipates criticism for a lack of depth or some glaring omissions. After all, Jacques Mesrine is apparently still a famous name in France, and his public persona lives on. If even half his supposed exploits were true, the story would still be crying out for a definitive dramatisation. As such, Richet has wisely avoided making any real ethical judgements of Mesrine’s character, focusing instead on the sex, violence and publicity that he thrived upon. But it’s Vincent Cassel’s committed and exuberant performance that develops this meat-and-potatoes content into an unbiased character study of excess and, over all, a very fine pair of movies.

«Mesrine» may not seem to be particularly even-handed at first because of the glamour, the wisecracks, and the endless charisma, all of which are drawn from the rich stylistic tradition of the Gangster Movie, and used very skilfully in its favour. The fast pace of the story ensures we are either seduced or repulsed by the central character, and rarely anywhere in between. Sympathy or pity is irrelevant, and he is too brutal and trigger-happy to be rooted for as a regular protagonist. The first film is the slicker of the two, and the more visually satisfying due to the wonderfully stylish recreation of early 60s Paris (and elsewhere). Cassel plays Mesrine with youthful vigour here. He’s all style and brash confidence, as endearing a wiseguy as any of Scorcese’s characters. It’s «Goodfellas», in fact, that «Killer Instinct» is most reminiscent of, with its sharp-suited mobsters (including a brilliantly grizzled Gerard Depardieu) and episodic year-hopping narrative.

By the half-way point, Mesrine is still something of an enigma. It’s only in «Public Enemy No. 1» that the pace slows down and we can see, through a few intimate and contemplative scenes, what he has sacrificed to live as a superlative criminal. «I wasn’t much of a son, I’m not much of a father either.» he says, while in disguise visiting his own ailing father in hospital. He gradually alienates his closest friends and accomplices by trying to maintain the outlandish public profile he cultivated, rambling pseudo-revolutionary politics to journalists and threatening to kill judges and destroy all maximum security prisons. The «Goodfellas» ensemble of the first part becomes the isolated, ego-driven «Scarface» of the second as Cassel skilfully matures his character into a man resigned to the fate he knows must be coming.

The over all impression left by «Mesrine» is that it manages to land successfully between crime thriller, gangster saga and character study. This is achieved by the virtue of a standout central performance, as well as Richet’s shrewd application of an American film-making style to a very French story. It ought to go down among the top crime dramas of the decade, or at the very least raise the (already decent) international profile of its impressive leading man.

Star Vincent Cassel spoke about his character, the real life Jacques Mesrine, as being «a symbol of freedom and a terrible man.» Before screening the world premiere of his new film’s workprint cut, Cassel acknowledges Mesrine’s brutal nature yet can’t stop from saying he loves the role and the opportunity to sink his teeth into being a madman gangster. Based off the criminal’s own memoirs, written in jail before his final escape, L’instinct de mort attempts to show the rise to prominence on the streets of the former military man. Spanning from his return home after the Algerian War for Independence to his daring escape from a high security prison, director Jean-François Richet brings us the evolution of a killer. Someone who is ashamed of his father, more loyal to friends than his own wife and children, and always looking for a high risk adventure, Mesrine lives without fear or moral consequence, leaving a wake of destruction behind him.

What happens with this film is that it tries to be a gangster tale, showing gunfights and action, but at its core is only a bio-pic. There is so much jammed into the runtime that nothing is allowed to breath or given time to evolve. Instead a problem is presented and then solved quickly in order to go on to the next. Mental feelings change on a whim often as Mesrine will be happily at home in love with wife and kids and all of a sudden, when his job is lost, becomes abusive and screams he’d pick his friends over his family any day of the week. Important relationships are glossed over so easily that you sometimes are taken out of the proceedings wondering about things that the filmmaker doesn’t deem worthy of time. Then why put it in at all? If Mesrine can drop his love for family so easily, it’s not like showing it is supposed to make us feel for him. No, he is cold-blooded to the bone, there is no need to pretend he may have a heart. Also, other events aren’t given any time for discovery. When arrested for the first time, all we’re shown is him talking about how the job may be dangerous and next thing we know he’s in jail. Perhaps we don’t need anymore than this, but evenso, it just makes the film seem choppy and sloppy when it really doesn’t have to be. This feeling crops up right from the get-go as the opening credits involve Mesrine and his partner, played by Ludivine Sagnier, engaged in a job. This takes place in the future and I’m sure will be elaborated on in the second movie, but why show it? Just to let us know that he gets older, basically ruining any surprise if he is found in a life or death situation. All showing that scene does for us is say he will not be dying in this film.

These scenes stick out even more because the action sequences are so great. When guns are blaring and tensions are high, Richet definitely has a knack for shooting fluidly, keeping all the action in frame and coherent. Once Mesrine is caught for a second stint in jail and put in solitude, the film really gets good. Along with his friend Jean-Paul Mercier, played by The Rocket’s Roy Dupuis, he hatches a plan to break out of the inescapable cage. While the actual escape is a subdued tense affair, trying to beat the clock, it is their return to try and free the rest of the inmates that creates an invigorating set-piece, one that in most films would be the showcase «out in a blaze of glory» moment. Here, though, this is just the first chapter of an eventual two-part story, so the event is allowed to live freely as an instance, either that will be successful or fail without necessarily dire consequences.

Another success is the infusion of humor throughout. Cassel lends Mesrine a very bitingly sarcastic wit that works wonders against characters like Guido, played by Gérard Depardieu, with one-liners and provoking jabs. Even when being pummeled by guards at the prison, he never bites his tongue. Other moments include a dual bank robbery, back to back and across the street; a Bonnie and Clyde type hold-up; and a fantastic kidnapping where he tries to tell the hostage it’s his own fault. Cassel’s delivery is pitch-perfect and tempers his volatile outbursts nicely.

As a character, Mesrine succeeds very well, he just must partake in so much within two hours that the actual activities never get enough room to stretch their legs. The fact that a second part is still to be released scares me because if all this needed to be squeezed into the first, how compressed will the new one be? The man is an intriguing one—murderer, thief, lifelong criminal—and I wish the story he encompassed here had a bit more excitement. Again, though, that’s not to say L’instinct de mort is boring, it is not. The pacing is just too disjointed for an audience to invest in a story thread long enough to care before we are on to the next. This version is a workprint and maybe some more time spent could improve it, but the way it currently leads into the next installment begs the thought that it won’t be changing too much at all.

The two Mesrine movies are easily the best gangster movies of the last years and can without a doubt be described as the French Godfathers even though the two films have not exactly the same class as the legendary masterpieces.

The thing that is really interesting about this movie is that it is told after true events and partially based on the autobiography of the French gangster and public enemy number one Jacques Mesrine. The movie makes very clear that one can’t develop much sympathy for the character but his radical way of life, his brutal honesty and his strong and dangerous emotions surely create a very addicting, explosive and unique character.The first movie tells his life from his actions during the Algerian War up to his escape from a prison in Quebec.

The character is introduced in a very interesting way. One witnesses his first theft, his first murder as well as his first escapes from prison but also how he gets into the crime scene, how he gets to know his second wife and how he gets along as his role as a father of three children with her. Mesrine always chooses the craziest, most radical and often most selfish way to escape from his problems. This movie is not just a gangster saga filled with action and tension but has also an emotional touch of the drama genre and some dark and sarcastic humour.

Mesrine is perfectly portrayed by one of the best contemporary actors coming from France which is Vincent Cassel. Roy Dupuis plays the very charismatic Canadian terrorist and Mesrine’s âme soeur Jean-Paul Mercier. The French acting crème de la crème appears in this first part of the legacy. Cécile de France plays Mesrine’s future girlfriend and partner in crime that finally decides to chose the path of freedom and justice. Gérard Depardieu plays the intelligent gangster boss Guido. Ludivine Sagnier portrays Mesrine’s latest girlfriend and excels in her role as a superficial blonde with fixations on a bourgeoisie lifestyle. The acting of this movie is really stunning and every actor plays his or her role close to perfection.

The movie also discusses topics such as love, friendship, treason, loyalty, respect and more in a very intense way and how Mesrine feels about it. He is a very extreme personality and some of his actions contradict what he has already done or will do in the future and this shows how fragile this gangster really is.

The greatness of this movie does not stop there. The part of the movie when Mesrine is put into a French Canadian prison is very intense. It is not only well filmed with interesting camera positions and cold, touching decorations but reminds me of legendary prison movies such as «Papillon» or «The Shawshank Redemption» and contains some well hidden but intense criticism. Mesrine’s escape from prison eventually led to the closure of those inhuman French Canadian prisons and this movie shows us the way of life in this hell in a very intense way. The movie also slightly criticizes the corruptive justice and police in France as well as the way how the medias deal with Mesrine’s fate and make an iconic modern Robin Hood out of a dangerous and ignorant gangster that begins to use the medias for his own good and enjoys the show.

As you can see, the movie contains many different elements and details that make it a very diversified, intense and still entertaining gangster movie which happens to be one of the best of its kind. If you like «The Godfather», «Once Upon A Time In America», «Papillon» and «The Shawshank Redemption» you should definitely check this masterpiece out. If you happen to like this movie, you should absolutely try to get the German gangster and terrorist movie «Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex» which is also based on true events and happened at the same time as Mesrine became the public enemy number one in France. The French movie has also some connections to those events as Mesrine talks from time to time about it as you should have noticed.

In the end, this movie about an extreme and charismatic character is way more than an excellent gangster movie with some social criticism but a gripping two hours of history class.

The only reason why I didn’t give the highest possible note is that I would have liked to learn more about the youth of Mesrine. For example, the movie didn’t show us his very first wife and how he quit her to go to the Algerian War. It didn’t show us how he got honoured by the French government and military for his heroic actions during wartime. It didn’t show us how he got caught the first time during a bank theft and how he dealt with it. Those little elements could have made the character even more intense, profound and interesting but a part of that, there is really nothing negative about this amazing movie.

Every country has it’s legendary Gangsters . In The UK it is the Kray Twins , In Italy it’s anyone in The Sicilian Mafia , In America there is a list as long as your arm but not many people outside of France have heard of Jacques Mesrine …… Now you have.

Based on the true story of gangster Jacques Mesrine — Mesrine presents the rise and fall of France’s most notorious criminal through a two-part showcase; wherein a series of hold-ups, prison breaks and kidnappings, give us an insight into ‘The Man with 1000 Faces’. Episode one creates the foundation of Jacques Mesrine’s character; from his youth as a dedicated soldier serving in the Algerian war to his seduction by the neon glamour of Sixties Paris and the easy money it presents. Mentored by Guido , the handsome and charming Mesrine soon works his way up the criminal ladder, and flees to Canada with his lover Jeanne having pulled off an audacious heist. However, he cannot resist the temptation of one big payout, and is lured out of hiding and propelled towards international notoriety…

I’m a sucker for a gangster movie. Without a doubt it’s my favourite Movie Genre and Mesrine : Killer instinct ticks all the boxes i require in a movie like this. The action is fantastic , the acting is totally believable and the personality that was Jacques Mesrine , makes this highly watchable . I have to confess i had never heard of Mesrine but thanks to a fantastic performance by Vincent Cassel , I’m unlikely ever to forget him.

If you like your Gangster movies then i can recommend this one to you. You might have to hunt for it thanks to people’s ridiculous squeamishness for films with subtitles but as usual the foreign language film rarely disappoints and the best this about this film is that it’s just the first part. There is a second film called Mesrine : Public enemy number one , and i cant wait to put it in the DVD player!

«Mesrine Part 1: Killer Instinct» is a Biography — Crime movie in which we follow the life of french gangster Jacques Mesrine, his crimes and all his actions until he becomes the number 1 public enemy.

I have to admit that before watching this movie I was not sure what I was going to watch since I had not watched the trailer of it and I had just read one article about this gangster. I was happily surprised by it since it is a very interesting movie, with a well written script and many action scenes. The direction which was made by Jean-François Richet was simply amazing and I liked the way he presented Jacques Mesrine and he combined very well his family moments with his actions and also his love affairs. Regarding the interpretations of this movie, I believe that Vincent Cassel who played as Jacques Mesrine made one of his best performances and he was simply exceptional. I highly recommend everyone to watch this movie because I am sure that even if you are not a fan of crime movies you will like it. If you like crime movies then this is the movie for you.

Jacques Mesrine (1936 — 1979) was a well-known French criminal, getting himself a name for robbing banks and a number of murders. After having received a huge ransom for kidnapping a French millionaire in 1979, French authorities declared him ‘Public Enemy Number One’. They increased their efforts to track Mesrine down, and executed him without a trial shortly afterwards. While imprisoned earlier on, Mesrine wrote his autobiography.

‘Public Enemy Number One — Part 1’ reflects the first part of this criminal’s adult life. Starting in the late fifties in Algeria, where French soldier Jacques Mesrine served in the foul war of independence, we get a clear picture of his development as a master-criminal.

Although I think it difficult to judge the historical precision of its plot, this very French film surely makes a good watch. Male lead Vincent Cassel acts a convincing Jacques Mesrine, and the many supporting roles shine with equal quality. The parts 1 and 2 of ‘Public enemy Number One’ provide a real blockbuster that sticks to the mind.

For the fans of Ludivine Sagnier. She isn’t in this Part 1, but will appear in Part 2.

I guess if you’re really looking for weak points of this movie, than you can find a few. First of, it’s a two-parter and has an ending, that leaves you with almost nothing … Except the desire to want to watch the second part. Then there is always the fine line, that movies like that are almost always more likely to be enjoyed at home, instead of the cinema.

And last but not least, if you are not aware of the real life character that Vincent Cassel is portraying (I wasn’t), than the movie itself will spoil quite a bit for you … On the other hand, you will only get bits and a few glances of some very interesting characters. Which could be kind of a shame, especially considering the A-List cast that gets assembled here (even in small/minor roles).

But if you can overlook all those things and are ready to watch the second part right away, then you will have a great thriller that you can enjoy (great performances included).

It is true that Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) was France’s public enemy number one during the 60s and 70s. It is also true that he murdered several people, robbed banks, repeatedly escaped from prison, and basically did all the things that legendary criminals aspire to do. But to think of him as just another criminal would be an unreasonable caricature.

In this first half of the notorious gangster’s life, director Jean-Francois Richet evinces the louche charm of the French criminal underworld in an effort to depict Jacques in a sympathetic light.

After a troubling time soldiering in the Algerian War, Jacques returns to Paris, where before long his sense of dissatisfaction takes charge of him and he accepts a friend’s offer of ‘off-the-book work’, i.e. crime.

He is introduced to Guido (Gerard Depardieu), the head of a right-wing terrorist group operating in France’s underworld. Guido recruits him, but warns that ‘In our business, you don’t win’. Depardieu plays his role with quiet brilliance. His acting is understated, yet he manages to be eerily menacing.

While on holiday Jacques, in a manner that would rival a James Bond-style seduction, beguiles then later marries his Spanish wife, Sofia (Elena Anaya). His sojourn is curtailed, however, when he goes back to Paris to murder the Arab pimp of a former lover.

That Jacques is a ruthless, relentless recidivist is never for one moment hidden. He may be a gangster, who violently casts aside his wife for his friends, but this is a man of principle, albeit criminal principle. He steals only from banks because, in his words, they have enough money to allow it; he never kills a person if they are unarmed; and he fulfills his promise to liberate his ex-prison inmates once he has successfully escaped himself. It is precisely these paradoxes which never quite allow you to feel that he is completely worthless.

He is finally jailed (on the first of several occasions) for a botched bank robbery. When he is released, he makes an attempt to ‘go straight’. However, he is easily lured back and teams up with a new muse, Jeanne (Cecile De France), who displays a similar adroitness for crime. Jacques is now a celebrity, admired by the press, but demonised by the authorities.

The film’s director claimed that only Cassel could have embodied this role. It is indeed the sheer magnetism of Cassel’s portrayal that compels you to watch the second instalment.

www.scottishreview.net

Jacques Mesrine was France’s most notorious gangster, and like many gangsters he has earned himself a bio-pic: or in this case two bio-pics. Director Jean-François Richet co-wrote and directed an ambitious project showing both the rise and fall of Mesrine. The first film was an excellent gangster flick.

After the brutal Algerian War for Independence, Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) is at a lost with what to do as a career. His friend Paul (Gilles Lellouche) encourages the man into SAO, a crime organisation, who partake in robbery. With him gaining money and living by his own interpretation of loyalty and respect. Mesrine: Killer Instinct document’s Mesrine’s marriage with Spanish woman Sofia (Elena Anaya) who bore him three children and his romance with Jeanne Schneider (Cécile De France). After becoming notorious in France Mesrine and Jeanne fled to Montreal which saw their criminal activities continue and he becomes a focus for the media.

Mesrine: Killer Instinct has a lot going for it, with a good script, a great visual style and excellent acting. Cassel was brilliantly cast as a violence gangster with a role that allows him to stretch himself as an actor, from being a lover, a fighter to a real scum bag to a man who suffers the horrors of solitary confinement. It was a great performance, making the character believable who does has a scene of loyalty, like beating two blokes up at a bar who insults the barmaid. Cassel was ability supported throughout, but to me Anaya was particularly excellent as Mesrine’s Spanish wife. But seeing I can not pick out an actor for being good or bad shows a uniform strength of the film.

Richet shows terrific skill as a director. Visually Mesrine: Killer Instinct was great to look at. Scenes like when Mesrine was in Algeria and the robbery of the casino were done with great style, with both scenes being intense. The Algeria scene using a lot of quick cuts and using a sandy filter and the casino robbery was done using hand-held cameras. The violence was realistic, with some decent gangster action scenes, whilst the raid on the prison felt a bit like Grand Theft Auto IV. Richet also effectively uses 24 style split screen to show events that are happening at the same time. Richet pacing was quick and the tone was serious: fans of gangster films will enjoy this film.

Richet and Abdel Raouf Dafri (who also wrote A Prophet) writes a very good script with a lot events and subjects being examined. We get to see the operations of a gangster at the ground level and show that they function in small groups and despite the media perception they is no glamour in gangsterism. There is character development and a strong narrative involving Mesrine. The film’s running time is a tout 1 hour 45 minutes (excluding the credits), which is excellent for a film it’s many events. But I believe that film does skip over Mesrine and Jeanne’s early relationship where they meet at a bar and the next scene the two are robbing a casino. Despite it being an unorthodox romance I can’t picture Mesrine saying to Jeanne ‘I know a great casino to rob’ straight away. But that’s a minor concern.

An excellent film and one of the best gangster films of 2009.

This, the first of two films, follows the career of infamous French criminal Jacques Mesrine from the time he leaves the army till shortly after he escapes from prison in Quebec. After leaving the army his friend Paul gets him started in his life of crime; at first it is house breaking but it isn’t long before the crimes escalate in both ambition and violence. On a trip to Spain he gets a girl pregnant and ends up marrying her; their marriage is rocky but they stick together; when she finally realises she can’t persuade him to leave the life of crime she decides to join him. After robbing the wrong establishment they find themselves wanted by both the law and certain criminals so leave the country; heading for Montreal. Here they get honest jobs working for a wealthy man but after he fires them they kidnap him. When he escapes they flee to America but are extradited back to Canada where they are sent to prison. The conditions in the prison Jacques is sent to are particularly harsh but he comes up with a plan to escape. He and a Canadian friend manage to escape but rather than lying low or fleeing the country they start robbing banks then return to the gaol and attempt to help other prisoners escape; getting injured in the process. After that they are Canada’s Number One most wanted people… to find out what happens next the viewer must watch the next film.

Before watching this I hadn’t heard of Jacques Mesrine but I am glad that I knew it was a true story as some of the events portray would have seemed too far fetched in a work of fiction! Who would expect somebody who escaped from an ‘escape proof’ prison to return to lead a two man armed assault on the facility! While it isn’t gratuitous there is quite a lot of violence in the film; much of it fairly brutal and shocking but glamorised. Much of the strength of the film is down to Vincent Cassel’s excellent portrayal of Mesrine; he might not look like a stereotypical movie gangster but he brought an intensity to the role that made him believable. He is ably supported by Cécile De France who played his wife Jeanne and Gérard Depardieu who played his boss Guido. While this isn’t always comfortable viewing I’d certainly recommend it to anybody who likes crime drama… having seen part one I’m certainly looking forward to watching part two to see what happens next.

To really appreciate the story in it’s entirety, you do have to watch both movies back to back. But clocking in at just over four hours, it’s a long slog, but worth it.

The first part is arguably the most entertaining and interesting, as this is the one where we journey with Mesrine into his life of crime. Cassel puts in a performance which is probably his best. and he really gets his teeth into the scenery and the script.

It’s fun to watch, has some really good characters, but it suffers from ‘Carlitos Way’ syndrome by showing Nesrine being killed in the first few minutes, which takes away any tension when Mesrine appears to be in danger. The camera angles in the opening moments are brilliant and show the paranoia that our anti-hero may be going though.

The film is made on a grand scale, and no expense is spared, every penny is there on screen, from the costumes to the cars, and the violence, while limited, is effective.

It’s hard to compare it to any other crime picture. it doesn’t glamorise crime like Scorcese did in the fantastic Goodfellas, nor does it make the titular character appear invincible like in De Palmas Scarface.

This film shows that crime does not pay, no matter how many women you get, money you steal, you will always suffer and lose or not see the ones who really care about you, and not your status.

An amazing first part to a brilliant movie.

As tales of sadistic criminal behavior go, the French picture «Mesrine: Killer Instinct» is one of the more vividly paced offerings I have seen in recent memory. It is a true story of one of Europe’s most infamous and charismatic criminals, Jacques Mesrine, played brilliantly by Vincent Cassel. The first first film is based on his autobiographic novel, documenting and projecting himself as brutal man who shot dead 39 victims during his 20-year run as a bank robber and kidnapper. A sprawling tale of violence, audacity, and desperation, funneled through an electrifying performance from star Vincent Cassel.

His story begins with Jacques returning home to France after time spent in the military inside Algeria. Jacques isn’t interested in a daily job or a structured life, preferring to join a criminal organization led by kingpin Guido (Gerard Depardieu). Rising in the ranks due to his loyalty and criminal skills, Mesrine quickly becomes a force to be reckoned with, electing a life of danger over the needs of his family, including wife Sofia (Elena Anaya). Soon taking a like-minded mistress (Cecile de France) and moving to Quebec, Mesrine searches for a simpler life, but after a few stints in prison, it temporarily cools his criminal ambition. However, with his instincts impossible to contain, Mesrine escalates his profile from a common crook, into a prolific media driven gangster with style.

Mesrine escapes from two high-security prisons, kidnaps a millionaire, broke back into one of the prisons in an attempt to free his friends, and went on the lam in Quebec, Arizona, and Florida. He justifies his brutal rampage as acts of revolution against the state. While officers are participating in a continuous on-going manhunt for this dangerous gangster, Mesrine is granting exclusive interviews with magazines, and wrote tender love poems to his lawyer. And yes, this is a true story.

The combinations of both films were nominated for ten César Awards, of which it won three (Best Actor, Best Director, Best Sound). The performance by Vincent Cassel, who portrays the title character, is unquestionably deserving. Cassel masterfully captures the essence of a complex criminal during various stages of his life. He doesn’t give Mesrine great depth because he is a psychopath, but he holds a commanding presence. He is brutal, and inscrutable—like a wild animal that kills for survival. He walks into banks to rob them displaying a celebrity-like status, as if he was making a guest appearance. Mesrine puts himself right in the middle of the action without hesitation.

Women were inexplicably willing to commit themselves to him. One of a kind gangster and playboy combined, who cherishes his Public Enemy #1 persona, which ultimately leads to his inevitable demise. The style here is categorized by its high energy, with a lot more impact than one expects from the laid-back French film industry. They have an impact recalling the days when gangster movies were grounded in reality, gritty and raw. The first film is easily the better of the two, but still a fantastic crime drama and highly recommended.

Mesrine: Killer Instinct opens on one of the most admirably up-front disclaimers ever to introduce a fact-based film, stating not merely that some of the events have been dramatized, or that names have been changed, but frankly that no movie can ever account 100% for the entire life of a person. Nevertheless, this first half of the story presents what sums up to a nearly simplified concentration on the proceedings present in most gangster stories. Comparable in some obvious ways to Goodfellas or Public Enemies but on the grander scale and somewhat in the artistically inventive vein of Che, Mesrine moves with blistering liveliness. Like Che, there’s little or no exposition or elucidation between scenes or events, but unlike Che this develops a hurried rhythm. But Richet manages to present things in fresh and innovative ways at times. Mesrine’s final day is seen first, in a multi-screened wall-to-wall juxtaposition of purposefully surplus and divergent angles. But as the film hearkens back to the beginning and starts to accelerate, it comes to explode with violence of Scarface proportions, a perhaps too bombastic orchestral score, and a virtually streamlined focus on the events we’ve seen in every gangster biopic.

After having seen this film, I’ve read a little more about Jacques Mesrine, who described all his robberies and killings as acts liberating him from the state, which may perhaps cause these films to elicit an above-average response for foreign films in the U.S., Killer Instinct finally making its way through flyover country at a peak time when Americans feel knee-jerk reactionary impulses to antagonize the state, impulses that will only dig us an increasingly deeper hole, just as Mesrine’s do him.

Vincent Cassel is vigorous, forceful and captivating as Mesrine, personifying the man via decades of bodily and academic transformation, from his days as a fighter in Algeria, to his days of incarceration, to his most despicable impulses, offenses and displays, to instances of emotional and raw intimacy, to his sincere tussles with self-identity. Quite soon, we believe him as scared of nothing and with the capacity for anything. Cassel is in every scene, giving a simultaneously understated and massive performance of contradictory impulses, fierce animality and masculine overdrive. Richet encircles him with remarkable support, too. Gerard Depardieu is superbly boorish as an older gang boss who schools Mesrine in the thieves’ code of honor, Gérard Lanvin is unrefined and fervent as a real radical with whom Mesrine establishes a partnership, and Elena Anaya is appealing as demure but highly effective partner in crime and love.

The film has numerous outstanding scenes, such as the one in which Mesrine meets Depardieu, and the two hit it off after threatening to kill one another. Or the one in which three guys take a night-time ride cracking wise, until the atmosphere delicately veers and one recognizes he’s about to die. Or, of course, a relentlessly tense and truly audacious jailbreak. Still, the forfeit of making me wait for the second half of the story before I see the big picture is that Richet doesn’t convey a consistent theme yet, not to mention a cogent narrative. He often appears to be after a modern kinship with a thug’s self-imposed code of principle, the seal of Jean-Pierre Melville’s hip 1950s and 1960s films, when the result is essentially a series of gut punches. But that is where its charm lies, as well as in the intermittent flashes of cinematic outlandishness. Enthusiasts of cocksure male renegade icons, car chases, gunfights, explosions and all-purpose carnage will be excited by Richet’s magnum opus.

How do you recover from an American project that was received with mixed reactions to say the least (that would be the Assault on Precinct 13 remake)? Easy: go back to your home country (in this case France) and devote time to your real passion project, the one that can give you bona fide director credentials. That’s exactly what Jean-François Richet did with Death Instinct, the remarkable first part in a two-movie story about famous French criminal Jacques Mesrine.

Like most other biopics, the film opens with the protagonist’s death, and what a spectacular demise that is: gunned down by unidentified shooters in the middle of a crowded Parisian street. The story then flashes back to the early ’60s, when Jacques (Vincent Cassel) returns home after a harrowing tour of duty in Algeria. Looking for work, he learns an old friend of his earns money on the side by carrying out certain «assignments» for a heavyweight (pun not intended) criminal known as Guido (Gérard Depardieu). At first, it’s all fun and games, exotic holidays and beautiful women. Then, once Jacques gets married, his wife isn’t quite happy with his lifestyle. The thing ends badly, and Mesrine continues his illegal career, toughening up after Guido is brutally murdered. Thus begins his successful series of bank robberies and scams that quickly lead him to becoming the most wanted man in France and prompt his brief stay in Canada. Even there, however, he just can’s stay away from trouble.

Richet is certainly no Michael Mann (an obvious reference when it comes to the robbery scenes), but he tells the story with gusto and precision, staging the tale as if it were a traditional gangster movie: taste of power, discovery of the unpleasant consequences, fight until the end to reach the top. He deals with an impressive amount of material (and this is just Part One) and handles it so that even the merely explicative bits feel tense and exciting. From start to finish, Killer Instinct moves at a reasonably quick pace, asking the viewer for commitment and endurance, and deservedly so: it’s one hell of a thrilling ride.

If one has to complain, it should be noted that the psychology of certain characters is a bit sketchy (Guido is really nothing more than the average gangster type), but that flaw is generally compensated by very solid acting. The most effective (and terrifying turn) is of course the one coming from Cassel, who was everyone’s first and only choice for the leading role, according to cast and crew statements. Returning to the more troubled side that has been left pretty much unexplored since La Haine, he digs into Mesrine’s dark psyche and re-emerges with a complex, chilling part that makes him deserving of the his widespread reputation as one of France’s best young thespians.

As for the deliberately open ending, the final captions are clever but a bit smug: after revealing the fate of characters who won’t return in the follow-up, the title card says «As for Jacques Mesrine… End of the first part». As if we didn’t know that already.

What is it with gangsters? I like watching gangster films and I don’t care what sort of gangsters they are. Something about the bravado and living the high life seems to appeal and there is always an element of charisma about them. That’s not to say I wish to be a gangster or to break the law, but the self confidence and the refusal to take sh** from anyone attitude is attractive. But, were I to be placed in a room with a genuine gangster, I’m certain I would be terrified and would want to get out of there ASAP.

The film opens with Mesrine making a decision whilst in the French army and in Algiers whether to follow his superior’s orders to shoot the wife of a terrorist suspect or to shoot the suspect. This moment, as well as establishing that Mesrine has the killer instinct of the title, shows us that he is not one for conforming to authority, as he ignores his superior and takes the shot.

From that point, the film is episodic as it follows Mesrine from petty crime to audacious criminal exploits. Each episode showcases another aspect to Mesrine’s multi-layered character. Yet, because they are episodic, some of Mesrine’s character fails to carry over from one to the next. This presents a fairly schizophrenic view of him which could well be in keeping with his real-life persona.

However, many of the episodes do provide insights into why this particular person’s journey took this particular route. Having left the army, Mesrine turns to petty crime with his friend. This leads him to more serious crime, working for a Parisian crime lord, brilliantly underplayed by Gerard Depardieu. His personal life also keeps pace with his professional ascension. He has an ill-fated romance with a prostitute and a holiday romance that becomes a marriage following a sojourn to Spain. The film also takes the time to illustrate the strained relationship Mesrine had with his parents, in particular his father. Far from coming from a broken home, Mesrine is clearly from a loving, if conservative, family. Only Mesrine’s own inner rage, reminiscent of James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, at his father’s seeming lack of courage rocks that world.

It is easy to see how Mesrine captured the imaginations of so many. His charisma, very ably aided by Vincent Cassel’s own screen presence, shines from the screen whether talking his way out of house or defiantly standing up to his brutal treatment when he is finally caught and incarcerated.

He was imprisoned and brutally treated, following a one man / one woman crime wave across the world and, as part of his escape plan he assured those helping him that he would return to break them out. It is testament to his stature that they believed him and it is testament to his word that that is exactly what he attempted. Throughout his return to facilitate the breakout, the film enters the realms of an action movie.

The exploits of Mesrine left me wondering just how much the makers had embellished, or Mesrine has embellished for that matter – the film is based on his memoir, or did this guy really do these things?

There is one thing that I do know about Mesrine: I can’t wait to see part two!

www.writeronthestorm.wordpress.com

It’s the story of gangster Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) from 1959 to becoming known as Pubic Enemy #1 in 1972. In 1959, he’s a French soldier forced to kill a prisoner. Upon his return, he and his friend Paul start robbing and working for gangster Guido (Gérard Depardieu). He marries Sofia (Elena Anaya) and have a family. He gets imprisoned. He’s struggling with his marriage. He finds a fellow criminal soul in Jeanne Schneider (Cécile De France). They rob a mob casino and leave for Montreal. In 1968, he befriends FLQ member Jean-Paul Mercier (Roy Dupuis). Mesrine and Schneider are arrested in Arizona and extradited back to Quebec as the new Bonnie and Clyde. In prison, Mesrine, Mercier, and others make an escape and go on a crime rampage.

This semi-biopic has so much material to go through. It’s an epic that deserves six seasons of big-time violent brutal crime TV drama. This two hour movie feels compressed into a highlight reel of the his gleeful descend. Vincent Cassel is terrific. He’s able to maintain the focus with the rotating cast of characters. It needs focus in terms of story but it’s a very compelling character.

Richet’s Ma 6-T va cracker is a legend and his Carpenter re-make Assault on Precinct 13 is a fluent and explosive action update. Clearly an accomplished filmmaker with a flair for violence, he was evidently attracted by the sheer ambition of this project but also the complexity of a gangster who, flourishing at the time of the Red Brigades and Bader-Meinhof, came to think of himself as not just an outlaw but a revolutionary, who wrote two autobiographies, and thus provided material for film-making that would be both layered and epic.

This double biopic, part one in 113 minutes and part two 132 minutes, resembles Soderbergh’s Che diptych. It too is neither a feature nor a mini-series, but a vanity project, a labor of love devoted to an ambiguous hero that’s hard to market and unsuited to normal theatrical distribution patterns. Both parts are saddled with the biopic burden of a churning chronology and an ever-shifting cast. It’s rather conventional and heavy-handed (though mostly successful) in its use of Marco Beltrami’s loud surging studio music to augment excitement and heighten suspense. But it’s at least as three-dimensional and logically structured as the Soderbergh project, and it has a star in Vincent Cassel who was made to play this role (Richet has said that there would be no Mesrine without him) and despite pell-mell pacing endows the protagonist with complexity. The film may be accused of jamming in too much incident and allowing too little reflection but I was impressed beyond expectations.

Richet’s first part shows the formation of a super-outlaw. Mesrine’s bank robberies and prison breaks are so spectacular and defiant that he’s declared «Public Enemy No. 1» in two countries, Canada and France, officially one of the most famous and dangerous criminals in French history, a figure cops wet themselves over and women want to sleep with. Mesrine, both parts, is full of the sense of how intoxicating it is to live outside the law, and how deeply cinematic gangster life is. Vincent Cassel is charming, charismatic, and loyal to his accomplices as he is ruthless and violent, a complex and magnetic figure who keeps changing from one sequence to another.

The second part shows him playing the role, a media-savvy public icon who would seek front page coverage and give Paris Match an exclusive interview while on the run. Loud, kinetic sequences alternate with quiet ones. This is a great and challenging role for Vincent Cassel, the role of a lifetime, appearing in every scene over a nine-month shoot, 45 pounds put on, early sequences shot at the end with the weight gain. The cast is full of first rate actors, including Depardieu, Ludivine Sagnier, Amalric, Samuel Le Bihan, Olivier Gourmet, Cecile de France, and more. This is not only an impressive and expensive project with high production values and an excellent technical package. It’s watchable and well done and at the end of Part One I was eager for Part Two.

Mesrine begins as an agent of De Gaulle’s colonial ambitions as a soldier in the Algerian war. «The Marseillaise was playing when they put a gun in my hand—my hand developed a taste for guns.» Like American Iraq war vets «Jacky,» as his parents called him, came back to his well off upper bourgeois parents (they live in a château) unstable and hungry for violence. War has taught him to torture and murder. It’s also left him with a racist hatred of Arabs. His father finds him a job but he prefers to work for a fat, tough crime boss named Guido (an excellent Gerard Depardieu, so submerged in his role he’s almost unrecognizable).

Mesrine (pronounced «may-reen,» not «mes-reen,» as he later insists to cops and journalists) is fighting a war with the rich that may be a war with his own origins. A trip to Spain gets him a beautiful wife, Sofia (Elena Anaya). He’s no good as a father, but he remains linked with his firstborn, a daughter, for the rest of his life. After a stint in jail, Mesrine gets a regular job to be there for his family. But he’s laid off, and goes back to Guido. Sofia objects, and he beats her up. Sofia disappears, and the film drops that thread.

Escape from the cops leads Jacques to go to Canada with a new girlfriend, Jeanne Schneider (Cécile de France, also submerged and barely recognizable), met like the other women in his life in a bar. This one is not just a bedmate but a willing partner in crime. Denied immigration status in Canada and told to leave the country, Mesrine and Jeanne hide by becoming housekeeper and butler for a wealthy disabled man, but clashes with other staff lead them to lock him up and extort money from his son. This fails and they flee, but are extradited back to Canada from Arizona. Mesrine’s subsequent hellish treatment in the Quebec Province SPC (Special Corrections Unit), worthy of Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo, is graphically depicted. This prison and escape sequence is anchors the film. With Jean-Paul Mercier (Roy Dupuis), his Quebecois accomplice from the extortion scheme, Mesrine breaks out in broad daylight. They immediately rob two banks and, keeping a promise, return to the prison armed to the teeth and attempt (unsuccessfully, but messily) to liberate the other prisoners. After this, Mesrine is declared «Public Enemy No. 1» in Canada. He has arrived. The storytelling in this first half is breathless but compelling. It is given particular coherence and focus by the vivid Canadian sequences and the prison escape.

L’Instinct de mort debuted in Paris theaters October 22, 2008. It is part of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at Lincoln Center, March 2009.

The film opens in November 1979, Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) and his girlfriend (Ludivine Sagnier) leave their apartment. Mesrine drives past the street where he was born; not any omen to detect here, a fun coincidence at the least. His instinct fails him again when he makes way to a big truck that immediately forces him to stop. Mesrine’s usually acute sense of danger is again off. It is ironic that the man who’s been so attentive to his destiny couldn’t see the alarming signs of the last stand-off. His luck was to change and so was his status from a living to a dead legend… still, a legend.

But like frozen by some divine intuition, Mesrine seems to realize what is bound to happen, like Sonny Corleone in «The Godfather» discovering the ambush from the toll booth. He sees the girl’s Yorkshire bark at the truck, and then a firing squad (literally) aiming at him, he bulges his eyes and for the first (and maybe only) time, there is fear in his eyes, now that he met his fate, he’s finally relieved from the macho pressure and can look as weak and frail as a beast cornered by the hunter. So, the manhunt ceases with the girl’s scream and gunshots heard while the image fades out. The two-part gangster biopic of «Public Enemy number 1» and criminal legend Mesrine can start.

And starting with the death isn’t just some artistic license from director Jean-François Richet; it allows the viewers to understand why Police didn’t take any chances. It is an execution in the same cold-blooded vein than the one that ended the run of Bonnie and Clyde. Indeed, during a career that spanned almost two decades, Mesrine robbed properties, casinos and banks, kidnapped people, operated in France, Canada and Spanish islands and even jail couldn’t stop him as he revealed to be a real Houdini at four separate occasions. This is not any criminal; this is ‘LE’ criminal, one whose record has seldom been matched, not even by American legends. The risk of such reputations is to appeal the wrong way, we can despise crime while admiring Mesrine to be a sort of self-made-man who lived the kind of turbulent lives many beta males wished to get a taste from.

And Cassel’s performance is integral to this appeal that is not devoid of sexual innuendo, the risk of seeing him as a «goodfella» (Scorsese wise) is inevitable. Cassel oozes masculine charisma, with a mix of tough and gentle manners that resurrect the time of a film Robert Mitchum, he embodies in his acting this notion that great men (in terms of historical magnitude) believe in destiny and behave accordingly so. This is a guy raised in a bourgeois wealthy family with a submissive father who worked in Germany and could never take a decision without saying «your mom and I». He got his son a comfortable position in a lace factory (of all the jobs) but ‘Jackie’ has other plans: he’s an Algerian War veteran, he pulled the trigger more than once in the name of hypocritical patriotism, and can’t stand his father’s submissiveness to castrating rules, he wished he could be proud of him at least once in a scene that echoes James Dean in «Rebel Without a Cause». Jacquie was a born rebel.

When he gets the ‘call of the wild’, Mesrine establishes himself as a true natural. He’s a cocky and oddly persuasive son of a gun. During his first robbery, the house owners come but he keeps his cool and pretends to be a police officer. He is immediately introduced to Guido (Gérard Depardieu) a member of the anti-De Gaulle Secret Army, Guido grows fond on the kid and becomes his mentor, teaching him the value of respect, among many other things. And under his guidance, Mesrine makes his bones in a series of scenes that channel directors like Martin Scorsese, John Woo or Jean-Pierre Melville, without glamorizing him. Mesrine isn’t just some gun-wielding womanizer, he is racist, he knifes an Arab mackerel and buries him alive and threatens his wife and mother of three children with a gun on her mouth, if she dares to call Police. It’ll always be his buddies before her.

And this virile allegiance sets the tone for the rest of the film that can be regarded as a series of robberies, shootouts and periods in jail, something that can be deemed as gangster routine in a 2008 film, but not with the revitalizing performance of Cassel, from beginning to end. The action scenes are top notch but never as fascinating as their effect on Mesrine’s personality and his slow but inevitable descent into the crimes that don’t get you jail sentences. This is the kind of performances that are severely overlooked by international awards, but it is in the same level of Oscar-worthy intensity than Marion Cotillard in «La Vie en Rose», there’s not one second in the screen where you’re not glued to Cassel and see in the expressive eyes, such mixed feelings of anger, pride, cockiness and hammy self-awareness. It is very revealing that the words he has for the Canadian press after his arrest, is «Long Live free Quebec» echoing De Gaulle’s famous speech. Indeed, Mesrine, a born show-man, belonged to an era that forged larger-than-life characters like De Gaulle, it is only fitting that the criminal world had someone on the same dimension. There wouldn’t be one like De Gaulle, and certainly not one like Mesrine.

After all, isn’t the movie adapted from a book he wrote himself? Mesrine cared enough to leave a legacy that he wrote it himself. That a film was adapted from it says it all, and that one movie wasn’t enough to cover everything says even more about his magnitude, not just as an infamous gangster but as one of the most defining real-life figures of French recent history.

/refers to both parts/

In general, I am not much into biographical crime films/series as I tend to know the outcome and then a big and important moment of thrill is lost. On the other hand, such works include less hare-brained and fabulous scenes which purpose is to «entertain» viewers and enhance «excitement». True, Jacques Mesrine´s life was crazy enough, plus showing the weakness of Western societies to deal with hard criminals and lack of technological opportunities to protect valuables. The script here is often uneven, with some excessive dialogues followed by (too) fast chases, but the performance of Vincent Cassel is always zestful, and one can have reasonably good overview of life in some countries in the 1960-70ies. For me, a nice change for stuff happening recently or to-be happened in the distant future — if bearing in mind sci-fi films and series.

That’s the perfect kind of film that I will place as among the favourites of my movie lover life. A realistic, brutal, ruthless crime tale which recalls the story of Jacques Mesrine, the famous gangster, the intended public enemy number one.

I won’t tell you every detail of this movie, except one.

Every knows that Mesrine has fought in the Algeria war. That episode traumatized him to the deep of himself. That made him a wild beast. And when he came back, he rapidly fell into the underworld…And so on…

Of course, he hated the Arabs, and above all the «women protectors», the women slavers, hoods who lived thanks to the prostitutes. So, when one of his mistresses, or women friends — he had many -, was beaten very hard by one of those «protectors» — an Arab !!! -, Mesrine reacted

fast. Very fast. We could see his face harden itself, become a mask of stone and iron.

Guess the following…

The sequence after, when the Arab was brought into the car — driven by Mesrine — by a friend of our «hero», Mesrine watched the Arab through the driving mirror, and his mouth gave a slight smile, a cruel smile, if you considered his eyes. A smile that did not reach these eyes. Those eyes that did not smile at all. A really TERRIFYING look. Every one in the audience understood that Mesrine was going to harm this man, at the rear of the car, HARM.

REAL HARM !!!!

He was going to INJURE him.

The following two minutes are really interesting because the two main characters of the movie — Mesrine, Cassel — and his friend — Depardieu — suddenly became disgusting to the audience. In fact we realized that they were not only lovers of justice by slaying a bloody women slaver, but, above all, they were racists. F…RACISTS. They were not better than the «protector». So, in the audience, we suddenly felt some «sympathy» for the poor Arab. Just one second. We were torn between the two sides. Racists gangsters, and a disgusting mother f…who disfigured women.

Where were the good ones and where were the bad ones ???

That’s what I loved the most in this film. And, of course, the actor performance of Cassel as Mesrine is outstanding.

I wait for the second episode : L’ENNEMI PUBLIC.

*REVIEW OF BOTH PARTS*

There is a short paragraph that opens both «Mesrine» films; the exact wording escapes me, but it says something like «no film can accurately portray the complexities of a human life». This seems to be a pre-emptive defense, as if Richet anticipates criticism for a lack of depth or some glaring omissions. After all, Jacques Mesrine is apparently still a famous name in France, and his public persona lives on. If even half his supposed exploits were true, the story would still be crying out for a definitive dramatisation. As such, Richet has wisely avoided making any real ethical judgements of Mesrine’s character, focusing instead on the sex, violence and publicity that he thrived upon. But it’s Vincent Cassel’s committed and exuberant performance that develops this meat-and-potatoes content into an unbiased character study of excess and, over all, a very fine pair of movies.

«Mesrine» may not seem to be particularly even-handed at first because of the glamour, the wisecracks, and the endless charisma, all of which are drawn from the rich stylistic tradition of the Gangster Movie, and used very skilfully in its favour. The fast pace of the story ensures we are either seduced or repulsed by the central character, and rarely anywhere in between. Sympathy or pity is irrelevant, and he is too brutal and trigger-happy to be rooted for as a regular protagonist. The first film is the slicker of the two, and the more visually satisfying due to the wonderfully stylish recreation of early 60s Paris (and elsewhere). Cassel plays Mesrine with youthful vigour here. He’s all style and brash confidence, as endearing a wiseguy as any of Scorcese’s characters. It’s «Goodfellas», in fact, that «Killer Instinct» is most reminiscent of, with its sharp-suited mobsters (including a brilliantly grizzled Gerard Depardieu) and episodic year-hopping narrative.

By the half-way point, Mesrine is still something of an enigma. It’s only in «Public Enemy No. 1» that the pace slows down and we can see, through a few intimate and contemplative scenes, what he has sacrificed to live as a superlative criminal. «I wasn’t much of a son, I’m not much of a father either.» he says, while in disguise visiting his own ailing father in hospital. He gradually alienates his closest friends and accomplices by trying to maintain the outlandish public profile he cultivated, rambling pseudo-revolutionary politics to journalists and threatening to kill judges and destroy all maximum security prisons. The «Goodfellas» ensemble of the first part becomes the isolated, ego-driven «Scarface» of the second as Cassel skilfully matures his character into a man resigned to the fate he knows must be coming.

The over all impression left by «Mesrine» is that it manages to land successfully between crime thriller, gangster saga and character study. This is achieved by the virtue of a standout central performance, as well as Richet’s shrewd application of an American film-making style to a very French story. It ought to go down among the top crime dramas of the decade, or at the very least raise the (already decent) international profile of its impressive leading man.

Star Vincent Cassel spoke about his character, the real life Jacques Mesrine, as being «a symbol of freedom and a terrible man.» Before screening the world premiere of his new film’s workprint cut, Cassel acknowledges Mesrine’s brutal nature yet can’t stop from saying he loves the role and the opportunity to sink his teeth into being a madman gangster. Based off the criminal’s own memoirs, written in jail before his final escape, L’instinct de mort attempts to show the rise to prominence on the streets of the former military man. Spanning from his return home after the Algerian War for Independence to his daring escape from a high security prison, director Jean-François Richet brings us the evolution of a killer. Someone who is ashamed of his father, more loyal to friends than his own wife and children, and always looking for a high risk adventure, Mesrine lives without fear or moral consequence, leaving a wake of destruction behind him.

What happens with this film is that it tries to be a gangster tale, showing gunfights and action, but at its core is only a bio-pic. There is so much jammed into the runtime that nothing is allowed to breath or given time to evolve. Instead a problem is presented and then solved quickly in order to go on to the next. Mental feelings change on a whim often as Mesrine will be happily at home in love with wife and kids and all of a sudden, when his job is lost, becomes abusive and screams he’d pick his friends over his family any day of the week. Important relationships are glossed over so easily that you sometimes are taken out of the proceedings wondering about things that the filmmaker doesn’t deem worthy of time. Then why put it in at all? If Mesrine can drop his love for family so easily, it’s not like showing it is supposed to make us feel for him. No, he is cold-blooded to the bone, there is no need to pretend he may have a heart. Also, other events aren’t given any time for discovery. When arrested for the first time, all we’re shown is him talking about how the job may be dangerous and next thing we know he’s in jail. Perhaps we don’t need anymore than this, but evenso, it just makes the film seem choppy and sloppy when it really doesn’t have to be. This feeling crops up right from the get-go as the opening credits involve Mesrine and his partner, played by Ludivine Sagnier, engaged in a job. This takes place in the future and I’m sure will be elaborated on in the second movie, but why show it? Just to let us know that he gets older, basically ruining any surprise if he is found in a life or death situation. All showing that scene does for us is say he will not be dying in this film.

These scenes stick out even more because the action sequences are so great. When guns are blaring and tensions are high, Richet definitely has a knack for shooting fluidly, keeping all the action in frame and coherent. Once Mesrine is caught for a second stint in jail and put in solitude, the film really gets good. Along with his friend Jean-Paul Mercier, played by The Rocket’s Roy Dupuis, he hatches a plan to break out of the inescapable cage. While the actual escape is a subdued tense affair, trying to beat the clock, it is their return to try and free the rest of the inmates that creates an invigorating set-piece, one that in most films would be the showcase «out in a blaze of glory» moment. Here, though, this is just the first chapter of an eventual two-part story, so the event is allowed to live freely as an instance, either that will be successful or fail without necessarily dire consequences.

Another success is the infusion of humor throughout. Cassel lends Mesrine a very bitingly sarcastic wit that works wonders against characters like Guido, played by Gérard Depardieu, with one-liners and provoking jabs. Even when being pummeled by guards at the prison, he never bites his tongue. Other moments include a dual bank robbery, back to back and across the street; a Bonnie and Clyde type hold-up; and a fantastic kidnapping where he tries to tell the hostage it’s his own fault. Cassel’s delivery is pitch-perfect and tempers his volatile outbursts nicely.

As a character, Mesrine succeeds very well, he just must partake in so much within two hours that the actual activities never get enough room to stretch their legs. The fact that a second part is still to be released scares me because if all this needed to be squeezed into the first, how compressed will the new one be? The man is an intriguing one—murderer, thief, lifelong criminal—and I wish the story he encompassed here had a bit more excitement. Again, though, that’s not to say L’instinct de mort is boring, it is not. The pacing is just too disjointed for an audience to invest in a story thread long enough to care before we are on to the next. This version is a workprint and maybe some more time spent could improve it, but the way it currently leads into the next installment begs the thought that it won’t be changing too much at all.

The two Mesrine movies are easily the best gangster movies of the last years and can without a doubt be described as the French Godfathers even though the two films have not exactly the same class as the legendary masterpieces.

The thing that is really interesting about this movie is that it is told after true events and partially based on the autobiography of the French gangster and public enemy number one Jacques Mesrine. The movie makes very clear that one can’t develop much sympathy for the character but his radical way of life, his brutal honesty and his strong and dangerous emotions surely create a very addicting, explosive and unique character.The first movie tells his life from his actions during the Algerian War up to his escape from a prison in Quebec.

The character is introduced in a very interesting way. One witnesses his first theft, his first murder as well as his first escapes from prison but also how he gets into the crime scene, how he gets to know his second wife and how he gets along as his role as a father of three children with her. Mesrine always chooses the craziest, most radical and often most selfish way to escape from his problems. This movie is not just a gangster saga filled with action and tension but has also an emotional touch of the drama genre and some dark and sarcastic humour.

Mesrine is perfectly portrayed by one of the best contemporary actors coming from France which is Vincent Cassel. Roy Dupuis plays the very charismatic Canadian terrorist and Mesrine’s âme soeur Jean-Paul Mercier. The French acting crème de la crème appears in this first part of the legacy. Cécile de France plays Mesrine’s future girlfriend and partner in crime that finally decides to chose the path of freedom and justice. Gérard Depardieu plays the intelligent gangster boss Guido. Ludivine Sagnier portrays Mesrine’s latest girlfriend and excels in her role as a superficial blonde with fixations on a bourgeoisie lifestyle. The acting of this movie is really stunning and every actor plays his or her role close to perfection.

The movie also discusses topics such as love, friendship, treason, loyalty, respect and more in a very intense way and how Mesrine feels about it. He is a very extreme personality and some of his actions contradict what he has already done or will do in the future and this shows how fragile this gangster really is.

The greatness of this movie does not stop there. The part of the movie when Mesrine is put into a French Canadian prison is very intense. It is not only well filmed with interesting camera positions and cold, touching decorations but reminds me of legendary prison movies such as «Papillon» or «The Shawshank Redemption» and contains some well hidden but intense criticism. Mesrine’s escape from prison eventually led to the closure of those inhuman French Canadian prisons and this movie shows us the way of life in this hell in a very intense way. The movie also slightly criticizes the corruptive justice and police in France as well as the way how the medias deal with Mesrine’s fate and make an iconic modern Robin Hood out of a dangerous and ignorant gangster that begins to use the medias for his own good and enjoys the show.

As you can see, the movie contains many different elements and details that make it a very diversified, intense and still entertaining gangster movie which happens to be one of the best of its kind. If you like «The Godfather», «Once Upon A Time In America», «Papillon» and «The Shawshank Redemption» you should definitely check this masterpiece out. If you happen to like this movie, you should absolutely try to get the German gangster and terrorist movie «Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex» which is also based on true events and happened at the same time as Mesrine became the public enemy number one in France. The French movie has also some connections to those events as Mesrine talks from time to time about it as you should have noticed.

In the end, this movie about an extreme and charismatic character is way more than an excellent gangster movie with some social criticism but a gripping two hours of history class.

The only reason why I didn’t give the highest possible note is that I would have liked to learn more about the youth of Mesrine. For example, the movie didn’t show us his very first wife and how he quit her to go to the Algerian War. It didn’t show us how he got honoured by the French government and military for his heroic actions during wartime. It didn’t show us how he got caught the first time during a bank theft and how he dealt with it. Those little elements could have made the character even more intense, profound and interesting but a part of that, there is really nothing negative about this amazing movie.

Every country has it’s legendary Gangsters . In The UK it is the Kray Twins , In Italy it’s anyone in The Sicilian Mafia , In America there is a list as long as your arm but not many people outside of France have heard of Jacques Mesrine …… Now you have.

Based on the true story of gangster Jacques Mesrine — Mesrine presents the rise and fall of France’s most notorious criminal through a two-part showcase; wherein a series of hold-ups, prison breaks and kidnappings, give us an insight into ‘The Man with 1000 Faces’. Episode one creates the foundation of Jacques Mesrine’s character; from his youth as a dedicated soldier serving in the Algerian war to his seduction by the neon glamour of Sixties Paris and the easy money it presents. Mentored by Guido , the handsome and charming Mesrine soon works his way up the criminal ladder, and flees to Canada with his lover Jeanne having pulled off an audacious heist. However, he cannot resist the temptation of one big payout, and is lured out of hiding and propelled towards international notoriety…

I’m a sucker for a gangster movie. Without a doubt it’s my favourite Movie Genre and Mesrine : Killer instinct ticks all the boxes i require in a movie like this. The action is fantastic , the acting is totally believable and the personality that was Jacques Mesrine , makes this highly watchable . I have to confess i had never heard of Mesrine but thanks to a fantastic performance by Vincent Cassel , I’m unlikely ever to forget him.

If you like your Gangster movies then i can recommend this one to you. You might have to hunt for it thanks to people’s ridiculous squeamishness for films with subtitles but as usual the foreign language film rarely disappoints and the best this about this film is that it’s just the first part. There is a second film called Mesrine : Public enemy number one , and i cant wait to put it in the DVD player!

«Mesrine Part 1: Killer Instinct» is a Biography — Crime movie in which we follow the life of french gangster Jacques Mesrine, his crimes and all his actions until he becomes the number 1 public enemy.

I have to admit that before watching this movie I was not sure what I was going to watch since I had not watched the trailer of it and I had just read one article about this gangster. I was happily surprised by it since it is a very interesting movie, with a well written script and many action scenes. The direction which was made by Jean-François Richet was simply amazing and I liked the way he presented Jacques Mesrine and he combined very well his family moments with his actions and also his love affairs. Regarding the interpretations of this movie, I believe that Vincent Cassel who played as Jacques Mesrine made one of his best performances and he was simply exceptional. I highly recommend everyone to watch this movie because I am sure that even if you are not a fan of crime movies you will like it. If you like crime movies then this is the movie for you.

Jacques Mesrine (1936 — 1979) was a well-known French criminal, getting himself a name for robbing banks and a number of murders. After having received a huge ransom for kidnapping a French millionaire in 1979, French authorities declared him ‘Public Enemy Number One’. They increased their efforts to track Mesrine down, and executed him without a trial shortly afterwards. While imprisoned earlier on, Mesrine wrote his autobiography.

‘Public Enemy Number One — Part 1’ reflects the first part of this criminal’s adult life. Starting in the late fifties in Algeria, where French soldier Jacques Mesrine served in the foul war of independence, we get a clear picture of his development as a master-criminal.

Although I think it difficult to judge the historical precision of its plot, this very French film surely makes a good watch. Male lead Vincent Cassel acts a convincing Jacques Mesrine, and the many supporting roles shine with equal quality. The parts 1 and 2 of ‘Public enemy Number One’ provide a real blockbuster that sticks to the mind.

For the fans of Ludivine Sagnier. She isn’t in this Part 1, but will appear in Part 2.

I guess if you’re really looking for weak points of this movie, than you can find a few. First of, it’s a two-parter and has an ending, that leaves you with almost nothing … Except the desire to want to watch the second part. Then there is always the fine line, that movies like that are almost always more likely to be enjoyed at home, instead of the cinema.

And last but not least, if you are not aware of the real life character that Vincent Cassel is portraying (I wasn’t), than the movie itself will spoil quite a bit for you … On the other hand, you will only get bits and a few glances of some very interesting characters. Which could be kind of a shame, especially considering the A-List cast that gets assembled here (even in small/minor roles).

But if you can overlook all those things and are ready to watch the second part right away, then you will have a great thriller that you can enjoy (great performances included).

It is true that Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) was France’s public enemy number one during the 60s and 70s. It is also true that he murdered several people, robbed banks, repeatedly escaped from prison, and basically did all the things that legendary criminals aspire to do. But to think of him as just another criminal would be an unreasonable caricature.

In this first half of the notorious gangster’s life, director Jean-Francois Richet evinces the louche charm of the French criminal underworld in an effort to depict Jacques in a sympathetic light.

After a troubling time soldiering in the Algerian War, Jacques returns to Paris, where before long his sense of dissatisfaction takes charge of him and he accepts a friend’s offer of ‘off-the-book work’, i.e. crime.

He is introduced to Guido (Gerard Depardieu), the head of a right-wing terrorist group operating in France’s underworld. Guido recruits him, but warns that ‘In our business, you don’t win’. Depardieu plays his role with quiet brilliance. His acting is understated, yet he manages to be eerily menacing.

While on holiday Jacques, in a manner that would rival a James Bond-style seduction, beguiles then later marries his Spanish wife, Sofia (Elena Anaya). His sojourn is curtailed, however, when he goes back to Paris to murder the Arab pimp of a former lover.

That Jacques is a ruthless, relentless recidivist is never for one moment hidden. He may be a gangster, who violently casts aside his wife for his friends, but this is a man of principle, albeit criminal principle. He steals only from banks because, in his words, they have enough money to allow it; he never kills a person if they are unarmed; and he fulfills his promise to liberate his ex-prison inmates once he has successfully escaped himself. It is precisely these paradoxes which never quite allow you to feel that he is completely worthless.

He is finally jailed (on the first of several occasions) for a botched bank robbery. When he is released, he makes an attempt to ‘go straight’. However, he is easily lured back and teams up with a new muse, Jeanne (Cecile De France), who displays a similar adroitness for crime. Jacques is now a celebrity, admired by the press, but demonised by the authorities.

The film’s director claimed that only Cassel could have embodied this role. It is indeed the sheer magnetism of Cassel’s portrayal that compels you to watch the second instalment.

www.scottishreview.net

Jacques Mesrine was France’s most notorious gangster, and like many gangsters he has earned himself a bio-pic: or in this case two bio-pics. Director Jean-François Richet co-wrote and directed an ambitious project showing both the rise and fall of Mesrine. The first film was an excellent gangster flick.

After the brutal Algerian War for Independence, Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) is at a lost with what to do as a career. His friend Paul (Gilles Lellouche) encourages the man into SAO, a crime organisation, who partake in robbery. With him gaining money and living by his own interpretation of loyalty and respect. Mesrine: Killer Instinct document’s Mesrine’s marriage with Spanish woman Sofia (Elena Anaya) who bore him three children and his romance with Jeanne Schneider (Cécile De France). After becoming notorious in France Mesrine and Jeanne fled to Montreal which saw their criminal activities continue and he becomes a focus for the media.

Mesrine: Killer Instinct has a lot going for it, with a good script, a great visual style and excellent acting. Cassel was brilliantly cast as a violence gangster with a role that allows him to stretch himself as an actor, from being a lover, a fighter to a real scum bag to a man who suffers the horrors of solitary confinement. It was a great performance, making the character believable who does has a scene of loyalty, like beating two blokes up at a bar who insults the barmaid. Cassel was ability supported throughout, but to me Anaya was particularly excellent as Mesrine’s Spanish wife. But seeing I can not pick out an actor for being good or bad shows a uniform strength of the film.

Richet shows terrific skill as a director. Visually Mesrine: Killer Instinct was great to look at. Scenes like when Mesrine was in Algeria and the robbery of the casino were done with great style, with both scenes being intense. The Algeria scene using a lot of quick cuts and using a sandy filter and the casino robbery was done using hand-held cameras. The violence was realistic, with some decent gangster action scenes, whilst the raid on the prison felt a bit like Grand Theft Auto IV. Richet also effectively uses 24 style split screen to show events that are happening at the same time. Richet pacing was quick and the tone was serious: fans of gangster films will enjoy this film.

Richet and Abdel Raouf Dafri (who also wrote A Prophet) writes a very good script with a lot events and subjects being examined. We get to see the operations of a gangster at the ground level and show that they function in small groups and despite the media perception they is no glamour in gangsterism. There is character development and a strong narrative involving Mesrine. The film’s running time is a tout 1 hour 45 minutes (excluding the credits), which is excellent for a film it’s many events. But I believe that film does skip over Mesrine and Jeanne’s early relationship where they meet at a bar and the next scene the two are robbing a casino. Despite it being an unorthodox romance I can’t picture Mesrine saying to Jeanne ‘I know a great casino to rob’ straight away. But that’s a minor concern.

An excellent film and one of the best gangster films of 2009.

This, the first of two films, follows the career of infamous French criminal Jacques Mesrine from the time he leaves the army till shortly after he escapes from prison in Quebec. After leaving the army his friend Paul gets him started in his life of crime; at first it is house breaking but it isn’t long before the crimes escalate in both ambition and violence. On a trip to Spain he gets a girl pregnant and ends up marrying her; their marriage is rocky but they stick together; when she finally realises she can’t persuade him to leave the life of crime she decides to join him. After robbing the wrong establishment they find themselves wanted by both the law and certain criminals so leave the country; heading for Montreal. Here they get honest jobs working for a wealthy man but after he fires them they kidnap him. When he escapes they flee to America but are extradited back to Canada where they are sent to prison. The conditions in the prison Jacques is sent to are particularly harsh but he comes up with a plan to escape. He and a Canadian friend manage to escape but rather than lying low or fleeing the country they start robbing banks then return to the gaol and attempt to help other prisoners escape; getting injured in the process. After that they are Canada’s Number One most wanted people… to find out what happens next the viewer must watch the next film.

Before watching this I hadn’t heard of Jacques Mesrine but I am glad that I knew it was a true story as some of the events portray would have seemed too far fetched in a work of fiction! Who would expect somebody who escaped from an ‘escape proof’ prison to return to lead a two man armed assault on the facility! While it isn’t gratuitous there is quite a lot of violence in the film; much of it fairly brutal and shocking but glamorised. Much of the strength of the film is down to Vincent Cassel’s excellent portrayal of Mesrine; he might not look like a stereotypical movie gangster but he brought an intensity to the role that made him believable. He is ably supported by Cécile De France who played his wife Jeanne and Gérard Depardieu who played his boss Guido. While this isn’t always comfortable viewing I’d certainly recommend it to anybody who likes crime drama… having seen part one I’m certainly looking forward to watching part two to see what happens next.

To really appreciate the story in it’s entirety, you do have to watch both movies back to back. But clocking in at just over four hours, it’s a long slog, but worth it.

The first part is arguably the most entertaining and interesting, as this is the one where we journey with Mesrine into his life of crime. Cassel puts in a performance which is probably his best. and he really gets his teeth into the scenery and the script.

It’s fun to watch, has some really good characters, but it suffers from ‘Carlitos Way’ syndrome by showing Nesrine being killed in the first few minutes, which takes away any tension when Mesrine appears to be in danger. The camera angles in the opening moments are brilliant and show the paranoia that our anti-hero may be going though.

The film is made on a grand scale, and no expense is spared, every penny is there on screen, from the costumes to the cars, and the violence, while limited, is effective.

It’s hard to compare it to any other crime picture. it doesn’t glamorise crime like Scorcese did in the fantastic Goodfellas, nor does it make the titular character appear invincible like in De Palmas Scarface.

This film shows that crime does not pay, no matter how many women you get, money you steal, you will always suffer and lose or not see the ones who really care about you, and not your status.

An amazing first part to a brilliant movie.

As tales of sadistic criminal behavior go, the French picture «Mesrine: Killer Instinct» is one of the more vividly paced offerings I have seen in recent memory. It is a true story of one of Europe’s most infamous and charismatic criminals, Jacques Mesrine, played brilliantly by Vincent Cassel. The first first film is based on his autobiographic novel, documenting and projecting himself as brutal man who shot dead 39 victims during his 20-year run as a bank robber and kidnapper. A sprawling tale of violence, audacity, and desperation, funneled through an electrifying performance from star Vincent Cassel.

His story begins with Jacques returning home to France after time spent in the military inside Algeria. Jacques isn’t interested in a daily job or a structured life, preferring to join a criminal organization led by kingpin Guido (Gerard Depardieu). Rising in the ranks due to his loyalty and criminal skills, Mesrine quickly becomes a force to be reckoned with, electing a life of danger over the needs of his family, including wife Sofia (Elena Anaya). Soon taking a like-minded mistress (Cecile de France) and moving to Quebec, Mesrine searches for a simpler life, but after a few stints in prison, it temporarily cools his criminal ambition. However, with his instincts impossible to contain, Mesrine escalates his profile from a common crook, into a prolific media driven gangster with style.

Mesrine escapes from two high-security prisons, kidnaps a millionaire, broke back into one of the prisons in an attempt to free his friends, and went on the lam in Quebec, Arizona, and Florida. He justifies his brutal rampage as acts of revolution against the state. While officers are participating in a continuous on-going manhunt for this dangerous gangster, Mesrine is granting exclusive interviews with magazines, and wrote tender love poems to his lawyer. And yes, this is a true story.

The combinations of both films were nominated for ten César Awards, of which it won three (Best Actor, Best Director, Best Sound). The performance by Vincent Cassel, who portrays the title character, is unquestionably deserving. Cassel masterfully captures the essence of a complex criminal during various stages of his life. He doesn’t give Mesrine great depth because he is a psychopath, but he holds a commanding presence. He is brutal, and inscrutable—like a wild animal that kills for survival. He walks into banks to rob them displaying a celebrity-like status, as if he was making a guest appearance. Mesrine puts himself right in the middle of the action without hesitation.

Women were inexplicably willing to commit themselves to him. One of a kind gangster and playboy combined, who cherishes his Public Enemy #1 persona, which ultimately leads to his inevitable demise. The style here is categorized by its high energy, with a lot more impact than one expects from the laid-back French film industry. They have an impact recalling the days when gangster movies were grounded in reality, gritty and raw. The first film is easily the better of the two, but still a fantastic crime drama and highly recommended.

Mesrine: Killer Instinct opens on one of the most admirably up-front disclaimers ever to introduce a fact-based film, stating not merely that some of the events have been dramatized, or that names have been changed, but frankly that no movie can ever account 100% for the entire life of a person. Nevertheless, this first half of the story presents what sums up to a nearly simplified concentration on the proceedings present in most gangster stories. Comparable in some obvious ways to Goodfellas or Public Enemies but on the grander scale and somewhat in the artistically inventive vein of Che, Mesrine moves with blistering liveliness. Like Che, there’s little or no exposition or elucidation between scenes or events, but unlike Che this develops a hurried rhythm. But Richet manages to present things in fresh and innovative ways at times. Mesrine’s final day is seen first, in a multi-screened wall-to-wall juxtaposition of purposefully surplus and divergent angles. But as the film hearkens back to the beginning and starts to accelerate, it comes to explode with violence of Scarface proportions, a perhaps too bombastic orchestral score, and a virtually streamlined focus on the events we’ve seen in every gangster biopic.

After having seen this film, I’ve read a little more about Jacques Mesrine, who described all his robberies and killings as acts liberating him from the state, which may perhaps cause these films to elicit an above-average response for foreign films in the U.S., Killer Instinct finally making its way through flyover country at a peak time when Americans feel knee-jerk reactionary impulses to antagonize the state, impulses that will only dig us an increasingly deeper hole, just as Mesrine’s do him.

Vincent Cassel is vigorous, forceful and captivating as Mesrine, personifying the man via decades of bodily and academic transformation, from his days as a fighter in Algeria, to his days of incarceration, to his most despicable impulses, offenses and displays, to instances of emotional and raw intimacy, to his sincere tussles with self-identity. Quite soon, we believe him as scared of nothing and with the capacity for anything. Cassel is in every scene, giving a simultaneously understated and massive performance of contradictory impulses, fierce animality and masculine overdrive. Richet encircles him with remarkable support, too. Gerard Depardieu is superbly boorish as an older gang boss who schools Mesrine in the thieves’ code of honor, Gérard Lanvin is unrefined and fervent as a real radical with whom Mesrine establishes a partnership, and Elena Anaya is appealing as demure but highly effective partner in crime and love.

The film has numerous outstanding scenes, such as the one in which Mesrine meets Depardieu, and the two hit it off after threatening to kill one another. Or the one in which three guys take a night-time ride cracking wise, until the atmosphere delicately veers and one recognizes he’s about to die. Or, of course, a relentlessly tense and truly audacious jailbreak. Still, the forfeit of making me wait for the second half of the story before I see the big picture is that Richet doesn’t convey a consistent theme yet, not to mention a cogent narrative. He often appears to be after a modern kinship with a thug’s self-imposed code of principle, the seal of Jean-Pierre Melville’s hip 1950s and 1960s films, when the result is essentially a series of gut punches. But that is where its charm lies, as well as in the intermittent flashes of cinematic outlandishness. Enthusiasts of cocksure male renegade icons, car chases, gunfights, explosions and all-purpose carnage will be excited by Richet’s magnum opus.