First of all: the opening scene takes way too long, and has very little to do with the rest of the film. It might be a sneak peak at part 2 of this flick, but I found it utterly useless.
The first 30-40 minutes or so are watchable, but rarely anything special. We get to know the leading roles as they live their pretty extraordinary lives. There's only one scene that left an impression on me before the movie break: Mesrine talking and bluffing him and his friend out of a tight situation.
After the break the worst aspect of the movie is first introduced. Without giving you spoilers it's hard to explain, but let me put it this way: any time the writers/producers felt a situation might be to hard to film, or too expensive, it is just skipped. While the audience is built up to some sort of a climax, all we get to see are the consequences and not the action or process that eventually result in these consequences.
It leaves the audience with a vague feeling of being robbed. It shows that the production team wasn't willing to go all the way, or didn't have the means to do so. This way, some very crucial days, months or even years are skipped like they were nothing. The audience sometimes have to construct whole years of his life while the movie made another time jump to some meaningless event that doesn't even have half the value of some other moments that are shamelessly skipped.
Apart from the story being badly executed and the movie being French I have to say the acting was quite convincing. Almost every one delivers a quality performance. On top of that, the action-filled second part of the movie was fast-paced and enjoyable to watch.
I wouldn't recommend you seeing this movie in theaters, but it might be OK to rent on DVD sometime.
5/10
The first 30-40 minutes or so are watchable, but rarely anything special. We get to know the leading roles as they live their pretty extraordinary lives. There's only one scene that left an impression on me before the movie break: Mesrine talking and bluffing him and his friend out of a tight situation.
After the break the worst aspect of the movie is first introduced. Without giving you spoilers it's hard to explain, but let me put it this way: any time the writers/producers felt a situation might be to hard to film, or too expensive, it is just skipped. While the audience is built up to some sort of a climax, all we get to see are the consequences and not the action or process that eventually result in these consequences.
It leaves the audience with a vague feeling of being robbed. It shows that the production team wasn't willing to go all the way, or didn't have the means to do so. This way, some very crucial days, months or even years are skipped like they were nothing. The audience sometimes have to construct whole years of his life while the movie made another time jump to some meaningless event that doesn't even have half the value of some other moments that are shamelessly skipped.
Apart from the story being badly executed and the movie being French I have to say the acting was quite convincing. Almost every one delivers a quality performance. On top of that, the action-filled second part of the movie was fast-paced and enjoyable to watch.
I wouldn't recommend you seeing this movie in theaters, but it might be OK to rent on DVD sometime.
5/10