The couple accepts this and makes an appointment to be at the station the next day.
Mesrine quickly takes on the manner of an undercover police officer and tells the couple that he and his “partner” walked in on thieves, stopping them, but that the valuables must for now go with the “police” to the police station as evidence. On his first “job,” the homeowners return early, surprising Mesrine and his friend in the act of stealing their valuables. Through an old friend he quickly gets involved in underworld activity. Later, back home in France, Mesrine cannot settle down to living with his parents or to legal work. In “Part 1” the story proper begins in wartime Algeria, where, amidst a chaos of screaming, shouting and orders, the young soldier Jacques Mesrine is directed by his superior officer into brutality against a family. Yet, in a scene that is truly moving, we see Mesrine risking his life to get into the hospital to see his critically ill father. He was apparently very concerned about his reputation – he nearly killed (shown in a horrific scene in Part 2) a reporter who had cast aspersions on Mesrine’s character. As one character says to him, “People are amused by you, but they are afraid of you.” The Robin Hood-like impression that many people had of him may have evolved because Mesrine committed his numerous murders in the context of big businesses, robbing and kidnapping the wealthy and the banks. Mesrine (pronounced Me-rin, as the character insists) apparently became, as did John Dillinger in this country, something of a rock star. The relationships between Mesrine (played to alternating charming and frightening perfection by Vincent Cassel) and his parents, lovers and friends feel real, and the violence does, too. It is easy to become jaded, in these days of CGI and hyper-realistic special effects, about blood and gore in films.
The film includes his activities and imprisonment in Canada but not South America – perhaps a third film would have been too much.ĭirector Richet deeply understands suspense in the face of violence. While Part 1, “Killer Instinct,” is fictionalized in places, as is Michael Mann’s much glossier “Public Enemies” (2009, about John Dillinger), this adaptation by Abdel Raouf Dafri stays close to the notorious French gangster’s history as recorded by others and by Mesrine himself in “L’Instinct de Mort,” the book he wrote in prison. In structure they are more a single 4-hour film accommodates the likelihood that viewers will see it will be seen in two parts. 2, 1979 in a real hail of bullets – are extraordinarily successful. These films about Jacques Mesrine – who was born on Dec.