Mesrine: Public Enemy #1 (2008)

Absolutely Brilliant!

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Although living in France I hardly speak it so was confined to reading subtitles. You have to see this movie in French though, it's as French as it can be. But, it's French as good as it can be. Hearing it in French makes it all the better. It's been a long time that such a good crime gangster movie was made. The realism level is amazing. If a car crashes into something else, it get's damaged, not like in your average American crime movie where the most ridiculous turns and jumps are made and they keep on driving like nothing happened. The shooting is realistic, shoot to kill but it's not that easy in all the excitement to hit something. It's the ugly truth about a live gone wrong. You start with feeling for the main character due to the circumstances but soon you'll end up on the other side, detesting his being, but that makes you all the more nailed to your seat to see what happens next. Gangster pure sang, which, of course, meets his end like it supposed to. I won't give anything away as that would take away your experience when you watch the movie, and watch it you must!

This is definitely entertaining and a command performance by Vincent Cassel. It took me awhile to get into it – for part I that is. The story is more or less straight-forward. It's about a thug who robs banks, intimidates his adversaries- sometimes brutally and escapes from prison any which way he can. It kind of resembles Scarface, but it is certainly not like the Godfather (I and II). It lacks subtlety (that's what I mean by straight-forward) and most of the characters who partner with Mesrine are more or less interchangeable and don't add much to the story. It's Mesrine and the action that drives this film. When it tries to get too serious; as with his wife, and many girlfriends, and the pseudo- revolutionary conversations, the film starts to sputter and wither – until the next action scene.

Both Killer Instinct (Part I) and Public Enemy No. 1 (Part II) seem to be intended as action films; you see them to be entertained rather than to find meaning. Despite this, Killer Instinct still managed to maintain a somewhat believable tone that this part quickly lost.The music throughout is painfully generic and overblown. In the final scene, action music races while Mesrine and his girlfriend are walking on the sidewalk and then stuck in traffic for a solid five minutes. Elsewhere generic action scores grow tiresome as the violence also grows repetitive.A number of characters overact in Public Enemy No. 1, particularly the policemen in the last scene. It seems the director tried to force an extra ten minutes in of showing Mesrine inconsequentially strolling around, which the viewer knows won't lead to anything as we've already been shown the conclusion to this scene, while the police watching him panic and pant. I found Vincent Cassel's acting to be much better in part one than part two as well, not to say it was particularly exceptional in Killer Instinct in the first place. He fell into some of the overacting utilized by some of the more minor actors. He was better in La Haine. Mathieu Almaric and Ludivine Sagnier were better.The writing in this film becomes overindulgent of Mesrine's self justifications. One would think that his rantings aren't meant to be taken seriously but for the fact that they are played up as dramatic monologues in scenes such as the interview. If this was intended to come off as misguided self-righteousness rather than a serious social critique, the director failed to convey that.On a basic level Public Enemy No. 1 was also much less exciting than the first. As far as part II's plot goes, Mesrine is pretty much riding out the hype that he built up in part I. The action sequences are fewer in number and on a smaller scale.Overall, it did the job in that it was mildly entertaining. Despite this, the action of this half of the story line wasn't as much so as in Killer Instinct, and as a result the director seems to have used cheap techniques such as an overblown music score and overacting to compensate.

Not having seen the first installment about the life of French criminal Jacques Mesrine, perhaps we are at a disadvantage. But recently, we caught the second part of the story in DVD format. The life and times of the man that was so resourceful in escaping captivity, gets a fabulous treatment at the hands of director Jean-Francois Trichet. The whole project owes a lot to the amazing performance by Vincent Cassel, not one of our favorite actors, but one has to recognize he made the whole picture enjoyable.Of course, we never even heard about the real Mesrine, but his life, the way it comes out in Abdel Raoul Dafri and the director's screen treatment is the stuff that made folk legends, much like the American gangsters in the period of the Great Depression. Unfortunately, not seeing the first part, there are things that are hard to comprehend by just watching the conclusion of the story, which is told documentary style.Vincent Cassel's take on Jacques Mesrine is what makes the viewer stay riveted to what is happening on the screen. Mr. Cassel has had his share of playing creeps before, but as Mesrines, he gives the performance of a lifetime. Mathieu Amalric appears as Francois Besse, the partner of Jacques' most daring escape from prison. Ludivigne Saigneur is seen as Silvia. Georges Wilson has a small pivotal role as the rich man Henri Lelievre, kidnapped by the two partners. Others in the large cast are the wonderful, but totally unrecognizable Oliver Gourmet, Gerard Lanvin, and Samuel Le Bihan in secondary roles.A lot of credit must be given to the amazing Robert Ganz cinematography and the careful editing by Bill Pankow and Herve Schneid. The music by Marco Beltrami and Marcus Trumpp adds a layer to the texture of the movie. One can understand the difficulty in making the film look real if one considers this is a story that happened more than thirty years ago. A lot of credit must go to the creator Jean-Francois Trichet for his achievement in recreating the story of a criminal that shook France during the time when he terrorized the country.