L'Instinct de mort

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.

"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.

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!

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*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.

Charistmatic gangster are a staple of cinema, and Frenchman Jacques Mesrine was actually liked to the most iconic of all such figures, Bonnie and Clyde. In truth, such people are rarely heroes, but this two-part story captures excellently the psychological processes that might have transformed an ordinary man into the public enemy of his day. Vincent Cassel is very good, and the film is full of suspense; it neither demonises nor glamorises its protagonist, and interestingly, sets his story against the backdrop of the political violence of the 1970s, which had a superficial interest to Mesrine as he built his own legend. Even if you're tired of violent criminal dramas, I recommend this one: the (true) story is amazing, and told with a humanistic viewpoint rare in such films.