Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1

Here’s irony for you: ‘Mesrine: Killer Instinct’, at 110 minutes, could have done with being at least half an hour longer to develop and expand the material; to give a real sense of the period of time that the film covers; while on the other hand the sluggish ‘Mesrine: Public Enemy No.1’, at two hours ten minutes, could have done with being at least twenty minutes shorter.

Although ‘Public Enemy’ adheres to the same tick-box approach to the narrative of Jacques Mesrine’s life, presenting us with a “greatest hits” compilation of prison breaks, shoot outs, verbal sparrings with judges and brutal retribution on gentlemen of the press who dare paint him as anything other than the Robin Hood figure he seems to believe he is, what makes it such a long haul is its inherent lack of suspense. We know how it’s going to end.

‘Killer Instinct’ opens with a terrific split screen sequence in which Mesrine and vampish consort Sylvia (Ludivine Sagnier) attempt a low-key flight from Paris, only to be ambushed by a bunch of gunmen in the back of a truck. The rest of ‘Killer Instinct’ plays out in defiance of its protagonist’s fate, and it’s precisely this attitude that gives the film its power.

‘Public Enemy’ starts with the bullet-riddled body of Mesrine being removed from his car, crime scene tape around the scene and police officers keeping the crowds back. The architect of this coup de grace is immediately revealed as Commissaire Broussard (Olivier Gourmet). A flashback has Mesrine being interrogated by Broussard post-arrest. Something about the structure the film falls into annoys already. It’s too self-conscious. Mesrine’s almost good-natured bantering with Broussard is evidently meant to come off as poignant or ironic in light of his inevitable demise as a result of Broussard’s operation, but it just reinforces the sense that ‘Public Enemy’ is a long haul towards a denouement we watched one movie ago.

I’ve watched the film twice now and really wanted to like it both times. And there are some effective moments – such as Mesrine playing to the gallery at a retrial, taking the piss out of the judge prior to pulling off a risky but ballsy escape – but there’s barely a frame that doesn’t betray how enamoured director Jean-François Richet has become with his subject. Two examples: Mesrine post-jailbreak romping with a couple of hookers while fellow escapee François Besse (Mathieu Alamric) tuts and shakes his head; and Mesrine coercing a family to get him through a roadblock, making the children laugh and giving the parents a big wad of cash as a thank you. The first example essentially says (adopts Cockney accent) “Oy oy saveloy, one o’ the lads, innit? He shoots he scores. Get in there, son, it’s yer birthday.” The second would have you believe (same accent) “Gor blimey, guv, that Mesrine geezer, he’s yer axshul bleedin’ Robin Hood, innit, stealin’ from the rich ‘n’ givin’ to the poor, Gawd bless him!” Both sentiments are total bollocks.

Late in the game, Richet seems to remember that Mesrine was stone-cold killer and throws in a weirdly protracted sequence in which the gangster lures a journalist who has impugned him a print with the promise of an exclusive interview only to deliver a beating and a burial alive. It’s a stark reminder of Mesrine as a dangerous and unpredictable man, and gives some indication of how dark and nasty ‘Public Enemy’ could have been, but coming after so much larking around and rose-tinted adulation, it just seems awkward.

Cassel remains just as compelling in the lead role, so often rising above the script’s deficiencies; he really is one of the best actors in the business. The period evocation, here focusing on the 70s, is just as detailed and evocative as in ‘Killer Instinct’. And Ludivine Sagnier doesn’t just provide the romantic interest but matches Mesrine in all manner of badassery. She alone gives the film a frisson no-one else achieves.

If Cassel’s Mesrine would sell his grandmother down the river to pull off a bank job or instigate a prison break, Sagnier’s Sylvia would make a priest kick a hole in a stained glass window. I know who I’d throw in my lot with.

Mesrine: Killer Instinct

 

For the benefit of the uninitiated, Jacques Mesrine can probably still lay claim – for all that he died over 30 years ago – to the title of “France’s most notorious criminal”. A bank robber, kidnapper, ice-cold killer, accomplished jail-breaker, memoirist, self-styled political activist, something of a master of disguise and an all-round bad mo’ fo’, it was inevitable that someone would make a movie about him.

Indeed, the first cinematic attempt to capture his life and crimes came just five years after his death: ‘Mesrine’, written and directed by André Génovès, starred Nicolas Silberg as Mesrine and concentrated on the last 18 months of his life, from his escape from La Santé prison to his death in a police operation that was little more than a sanctioned assassination.

In 2008, Jean-François Richet premiered his two-part biopic with Vincent Cassel in the lead role. Unlike Génovès’s film, Richet’s epic covers the entirety of Mesrine’s widely-reported career, kicking off in the late 50s as he returns from military service in Algeria and gets in involved in the Parisian underworld under the aegis of mob boss Guido (Gerard Depardieu).

 

An early scene has a uniformed Mesrine standing guard while a couple of other soldiers brutally interrogate an Algerian freedom fighter over the location of an incendiary device. The prisoner’s sister is hauled in and Mesrine is ordered to shoot her. Instead, he blows away the terrorist. It’s a histrionic and utterly uncontextualised scene (Mesrine’s political ideals don’t surface till the second film and he doesn’t really act on them other than talking about getting involved with the Red Brigade), and I can’t help feeling that, as with much in both films, it merely serves to tick a box as Richet waltzes us through a Jacques Mesrine “greatest hits” compilation.

‘Killer Instinct’ just about makes the dance worthwhile. Richet nails the late 50s/early 60s period recreation as Mesrine embraces the criminal lifestyle, gets involved with the good-natured Sofia (Elena Anaya) and tries to reform after a prison sentence for armed robbery; redundancy and the lure of easy money by hooking up with his erstwhile cronies combine to drive him back to a life of crime.

Richet plays much of this in the vein of Jean-Pierre Melville. An interlude in Canada and the US – Mesrine accompanied by new girlfriend Jeanne (Cecile de France) – lets the director cut loose with some explicitly American iconography, which in one respect is apposite since Melville himself rooted his aesthetic in American crime cinema and in another is completely hackneyed due to the over-reliance on Bonnie and Clyde style tropes.

 

An abrupt shift into the prison break genre follows when Mesrine is arrested, extradited to Quebec and sentenced to the St-Vincent-de-Paul maximum security facility. This section plays like ‘Midnight Express’ as sadistic guards routinely beat the shit out of Mesrine and hose him down with jets of cold water. His escape is so laughably easy that it makes ‘Two Way Stretch’ look like ‘The Shawshank Redemption’; if you didn’t know it was based on fact, you’d find your suspension of disbelief stretched to breaking point.

Ranking equally in the this-would-be-fucking-ludicrous-if-it-hadn-t-actually-happened stakes is the climactic scene where Mesrine and fellow escapee Jean-Paul Mercier (Roy Dupuis) attempt to spring their fellow prisoners, provoking a gun battle with the prison guards and sustaining injuries but failing in their intent.

Richet compresses a hell of a lot of incident into 110 minutes. ‘Killer Instinct’ occasionally feels like it ought to be a two and half hour movie, with the narrative and the passage of time and the character interrelationships having the proper time to breathe and make sense and be developed. Instead, a sense of truncation lies heavily across the production. Script and editing conspire to ellipsis. Ultimately, the production design, the period recreation and Cassel’s flamboyant central performance carry it. No classic, but enough decent material to perk one’s interest for part two.