Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Public Enemy #1

Director: Jean-François Richet
Year Released: 2008
Rating: 2.0

Two film depiction of the dangerous existence of notorious French miscreant Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) begins with him getting a taste for torture while serving in Algeria and shows him getting good at robbing banks, better at getting caught and best at escaping from jail (to do it all over again). The subtext is fairly slight in this - despite running for a combined four hours - and Richet - in basing this on Mesrine's book (which he wrote in prison!) - is choosing to film the 'fiction' rather than the reality, with Mesrine acting as his own mythmaker, a Robin Hood-type figure ... and a sociopath attention whore. If it weren't for Cassel's magnetism - and Richet's adequate handling of the action sequences (I always love a good prison escape) the running time would not be quite so tolerable - it doesn't reveal much about either the criminal mind that hasn't been touched on before (or after: compare/contrast with Assayas' depiction of Carlos the Jackal), not does it speak much about France's socioeconomic condition at the time (and no, one or two rantings by its lead near the end of Public Enemy #1 is exactly sufficient). Also: Richet suggesting that Mesrine is some kind of Messianic figure (even the poster for Public Enemy #1 echoes Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ) cannot possibly be taken seriously. I mean come on: the man was a nut.