Film Review: Mesrine: Killer Instinct

Mesrine: Killer Instinct is the first chapter of a two part gangster epic, telling the true story of notorious French criminal Jacques Mesrine, who 'rose' from robbing banks and breaking into homes to become the French Public Enemy Number One.

Part One tells of the events leading up to the Public Enemy Number One status, and stars Vincent Cassel as the titular Mesrine. Cassel is absolutely superb in the role, and so far is the performance of a lifetime. Mesrine, obviously, isn't the nicest piece of work, and Cassel makes no attempt to cover up that fact. Another nod goes to a emphatic performance of Michel Duchaussoy as Mesrine's Father, a subtle performance in a film full of characters that, at times, are anything but.

The film starts with a brief look at Mesrine's days in the military during the Algerian War, and his return home after that as he hooks up with old friend Paul (Gilles Lellouche) who introduces him to father-figure gangster Guido (Gerard Depardieu) and the crime wave that followed, including meeting Jeanne Schneider (Cecile De France), the Bonnie to his Clyde.

The film is fantastic, full of great performances and tense sequences, but the problem is the first hour where the above occurs. It's just so rushed, characters are introduced so quickly you have no clue what is happening at times. The worst example of this is the first meeting of Mesrine and Schneider. One minute they are meeting in a bar, the next they are knocking off a bank! It carries on the whole first hour or so, there's marriages and births just glossed over. One second he's married, the next he's not and has an extra kid from the last time we checked, with only a brief mention as an explanation. With the film being such a two part epic, surely an extra 15-30 minutes could have been given just to flesh the plot out a bit?

The pace finally slows down a bit for a stay in prison, which is given time to grow and turns into a terrifically tense escape attempt, and after that a simply nuts stunt that you will have to see to believe (Hell, I want to see if it REALLY happened so crazy it was, but want to watch Part Two first to avoid spoilers) the last third of the film is simply superb stuff. You just wish the rest of the film could have been given the time allowed to it.

Hopefully the second part (named Public Enemy Number One, of course, keep them peeled for a review) will continue at this pace, rather than the jumping through the years that really brought Killer Instinct down a notch or two.

***1/2

A incredible performance from Cassel, fantastic performances from all and some brilliantly tense scenes in the last hour are overshadowed by a very jumpy first hour, which never really settles down. Would love to see an extended version of this down the line.