ALLAN HUNTER at the Movies

IN 1970S France one man stole all the headlines. Jacques Mesrine was a self-confessed killer, notorious bank robber and insatiable self-publicist. Some saw him as the embodiment of evil. Others regarded him as an irrepressible folk hero in the Robin Hood tradition. The facts of his life are stranger than any fiction and provide more than enough material for a brace of French thrillers that showcase a mesmerising central performance from Vincent Cassel.

Cassel’s Jacques Mesrine is a wild force of nature; a man who can dominate a room simply by entering it and pull a trigger without hesitation. He even states “the only law is the law of the jungle”.

Mesrine: Killer Instinct suggests that his instincts were honed during a spell as a young soldier in Algeria, ordered to torture and kill without asking why. In Paris, he subsequently becomes a hired gun for gangster Guido (Gerard Depardieu). It isn’t too long before his first armed robbery, his first conviction and the swift discovery that there hasn’t been a prison built that could hold him.

The story is told with such swagger that it makes for compelling viewing. It has the energy of a 1970s Sidney Lumet thriller like Dog Day Afternoon, and the style of French gangster films of the same decade like Le Cercle Rouge.

Director Jean-Francois Richet grabs the viewer from the opening frames and plunges you into a world of pulse-racing tension, moral ambiguity and spellbinding storytelling. It is easily one of the best thrillers of the year and streets ahead of highly touted Hollywood fare like Public Enemies.

The good news is that the forthcoming second film in the diptych, Mesrine: Public Enemy Number One, is even better.

Nationwide release

Director: Jean-Francois Richet
Cast: Vincent Cassel, Cecil de France, Gerard Depardieu, Gilles Lellouche, Roy Dupuis, Ludivine Sagnier
Screenwriter: Abdel Raoul Dafri, Jean Francois Richet, based on the book L’instinct de mort by Jacques Mesrine
Certificate: 15
Running time: 113 mins
Country: France
Year: 2008

© Allan Hunter, 2009