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.
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.