Review: MESRINE: KILLER INSTINCT/PUBLIC ENEMY #1

Jacques Mesrine was a real-life violent thug with a penchant for publicity and drama and it’s surprising that only now, more than 30 years after his death, they’ve gotten around to making a film about his life. MESRINE: KILLER INSTINCT is a wildly entertaining, if somewhat episodic and scattershot biopic of the famed gangster (Vincent Cassel in an epic, Cesar Award-winning performance), known in his day as the French John Dillinger. Director Jean-Francois Richet barrels breathlessly through 20 years of daring heists, flying bullets, mob violence, love affairs, and jail breaks throughout the 1960s and 1970s and the action clocks in at just under four hours. Actually it’s two movies that open today at the Tivoli in St. Louis; MESRINE: KILLER INSTINCT was made in 2007 and its sequel MESRINE: PUBLIC ENEMY #1 a year later. European audiences had to wait between films but I would think seeing these back-to-back makes a much more satisfying experience, especially since part one ends so abruptly.

Mesrine’s story, which spans a quarter of a century, has an epic feel despite its intimate perspective. MESRINE: KILLER INSTINCT, the first half, establishes Mesrine as a legend and is based on a memoir he wrote in prison though it opens with his public execution in his car by French police in 1979. Richet tells the story in flashback beginning with our anti-hero’s relatively conscientious time as a soldier in occupied Algeria. It chronicles his early petty crimes before he’s taken under wing by a family of gangsters led by the dangerous Guido (a scary Gerard Depardieu), his rotund mentor. He soon teams up with his soul-mate moll, a lovely prostitute named Jeanne (Cecile de France) with whom he engages in a Bonnie-and-Clyde-style crime spree that forces these lovers to flee France for Canada, then the United States. The second part, MESRINE: PUBLIC ENEMY #1 opens again with the scene of Mesrine’s death, though shot from a different perspective. We then flashback to observe more of Mesrine’s crimes, arrests, trials, successful escapes, and examples of why he was dubbed the ‘Master of Disguise’. During one of his stays in prison, he befriends another crook, Jean-Francois Besse (Mathieu Amalric, the Bond villain in QUANTUM OF SOLACE), and once the two are out of jail they form a perfect crime pair alongside Mesrine’s new wife Sylvie (Ludivine Sagnier). The pace slows down a bit in this second half and we can see, through a few intimate and calm scenes, what Mesrine has sacrificed to live as a world-class criminal.
Both films show Mesrine’s petty thuggery and thievery for exactly what it is: a guy grabbing as much as he can, because he can, and because he’s got the threat of violence to back it up. And, as with THE GODFATHER or GOODFELLAS, it’s a story told with such a high level of craft that it’s hypnotic; at first it taps into our love of gangster movies, and getting to the root of their appeal, for we get to participate, vicariously at least, in the transgressions of the main character. Though not in the same league as Coppola’s or Scorsese’s epics, the MESRINE films are as compelling and absorbing as any more recent crime drama I have seen. It rushes headlong through Mesrine’s early career without pausing very often for any sort of character development or larger context, but at four hours, the script eventually manages to show all the facets of Misrene; he’s a fully developed individual capable of some good but mostly great evil. Unfortunately, the MESRINE films suffer from the predictability never completely avoidable in these kinds of movies, falling prey to a story that marches rigidly from episode A to episode B. The film’s big shootout scenes are nicely handled but don’t build up to much, In some ways Mesrine is just too much a cinematic character. His heists are so audacious, his jailbreaks so brazen, and his ability to dodge hundreds of screaming bullets so superhuman, that the film falls perilously close to DIE HARD territory. I know it’s based in fact, and it is exciting but it’s often just too unbelievable and may have played better a bit more grounded in reality. It’s a very violent film and much of the brutality is sudden, shocking, and visceral. One grueling death in particular, involving an Arab who Mesrine deems unworthy of his word, is particularly unsettling. Coiled and unpredictable, Cassel invests his role with such confident charisma you can’t take your eyes off of him whether he be charming, revolting, or both (Cassel gained 40 pounds for the role. The sequences were shot backwards chronologically so we watch Misrene become more bloated as he becomes increasingly paranoid and weak). Despite minor flaws the two films are superb, with terrific action set-pieces and many moments of real tension. You’ll find yourself liking Mesrine despite yourself thanks to Cassel’s full-blooded performance and his character’s lawless ways which pander to most people’s hesitant admiration for those who choose to live outside the laws that bind the rest of us.

4 1/2 of 5 stars