Mesrine: Part 1: Killer Instinct and Part 2: Public Enemy #1

Phew, ok just saw both parts of Mesrine in a row.  And overall it was pretty ok.  I don’t have a whole lot to say about the series but here are a few things.

Mesrine was a French gangster who ran amuck during the 60’s and 70’s in both France and Canada.  While he was stationed in Algeria in the late 50’s he did some horrible shit that fucked him up and when he came back to France he went for a life of crime instead of staying straight.  Eventually he becomes this crime lord that can’t be stopped.  He keeps robbing banks and escaping from prisons and the cops just can’t seem to nab him.

So Vincent Cassel (Brotherhood of the Wolf, Eastern Promises) is this series.  He is definitely the guy that makes this whole thing.  He’s so goddamn charismatic that you can’t help but get caught up in his bullshit and you want to see Mesrine succeed at his life of crime.  But really he’s a terrible ruthless monster.  In my opinion there should’ve been more stuff that made him seem like a deplorable scumbag or less stuff that made him seem so likeable.  There are some scenes like one where he sticks a gun in his wife’s mouth because she tries to stop him from continuing his crime sprees that make you think twice.  But admittedly I forgot about the bad stuff that he did or I overlooked it because of his magnetism.  But Cassel is fucking great.  He brings a lot of life to a character that is supposed to be very animated.  Mesrine gets off on his notoriety and needs to be on the front page of the newspapers every day.  He also always needs to have some sort of scam going whether it’s robbing a bank or kidnapping a billionaire.  He also seems to enjoy escaping from jail just as much as he enjoys pricking up broads. 

Cassel’s transformation as the two films progress was another great touch.  He starts out as a young mustachioed up-and-comer but by the end he’s an overweight bearded veteran that has several guns with him at all times.  Mesrine keeps changing his appearance with his facial hair, haircut and weight fluctuation.  So kudos to Cassel for fully applying himself to the part.

Now the first movie, Killer Instinct, is definitely the better of the two.  It’s not a full complete movie and feels like part of a series but overall it was more badass and more interesting.  He does a bunch of crime shit and there’s not much more to say except that the ending is awesome.  Of course I’m not going to spoil it for you but for me, at least, it kinda came as a surprise.  You see Mesrine promises to do something and you certainly don’t expect him to keep that promise but…well you’ll have to watch to find out what it is.  It felt gratifying and really good that this movie had one helluva pay off.  Not that the rest of the film was boring because it definitely wasn’t but because you know that this is only part one so you think that they’re gonna end it on a cliff hanger.  Thank Christ they didn’t.    

And that makes it even harder to admit that the second film, Public Enemy #1, didn’t bring anything new to the table.  It actually gets pretty goofy and becomes too light most of the time.  It felt more like an Ocean’s Eleven picture with how he was able to escape from prison and all his disguises n’ shit (which is ironic since Vincent Cassel is in both Ocean’s Twelve and Ocean’s Thirteen).  I mean at one point there’s a montage of him and his girlfriend/wife shopping for jewelry while “Rapper’s Delight” plays.  How did we get so far from the fucking kick ass ending of the first one?  I can’t really say don’t see the second installment, especially after you’ve seen the first.  I can only say if you didn’t like Killer Instinct then there’s no need to watch Public Enemy #1 ‘cause it only peters out and leaves you with an ending that you already know about because they showed it to you at the beginning of the first movie.  I though that was a huge mistake by the way.  The second movie would’ve been a little more exciting if you didn’t know how it was all going to end but they drag it out for like ten or twelve minutes.  I would even go as far as to say that it became a little excruciating because you’ve come this far and you’re not going to turn the movie off now at the very end of a two part, four plus hour series.  So you’re forced to sit there and go through in detail how the whole thing finishes.  The weird thing is that this doesn’t bother me so much (or at all) with other movies that use this same device but in this case it was a nasty cap to an already lacking film so I think it became more pronounced.  It probably would’ve worked better if they had rolled everything into one movie.

But at the same time I’m glad there are two films here.  It makes me feel more accomplished, like I made it through an event.  It also allows for each movie to takes its time with Mesrine and that’s why we’re watching these pictures in the first place.  Whether or not he was like this in real life, in these movies he’s a fun (and scary) guy to watch.