Mesrine – Killer Instinct

The first part of a two-part dramatised biopic about Jacques Mesrine. Mesrine, on the evidence of this film, had a tumultuous career in criminal activity that he sometimes justified as being politically motivated. The period covered here ranges from the 50s to the 70s, and follows Mesrine from, briefly, the French Algerian war and his return to France, and on to Canada and the U.S.A. Although much is based on Mesrine’s own account, incidental facts about Mesrine, what he said to an accomplice after such and such a job, for example, are not necessarily true, and a dislcaimer to this effect prefaces the screenplay. In particular, we could easily believe that there is some self-serving going on, albeit not enough to suggest that Mesrine is a “nice guy” beneath it all.

There is little interpretation or meditation on Mesrine’s character and its formative influences. For example, he is shown to have had a duty as a kind of executioner in the French-Algerian conflict, but we aren’t told how he got that position, whether he sought it, or whether it was thrust upon him. So, is this film about Mesrine, or is it a dramatic film first and foremost? Certainly, the presentational style ramps up the drama, with the result that an air of uneasy foreboding is the dominating mood and, thanks in no small amount to the pulsing incidental music, we follow Mesrine through the planning and execution of his various escapades pitched reasonably near to the edge of our seats.

Times being what they were there is a refreshing absence of convoluted paper trails, wire taps, GPS trackers, and similar technically-oriented crimefighting tools that have featured prominently in some recent crime movies. In Mesrine’s, simpler, time, it is suggested, a sense of derring do, a quick wit and a pistol (or unarmed, as was the case for one of his first accomplices), could get you far in the underworld. These things could get you out of prison, for example, and back in the business of liberating the treasures that the wealthy kept, either under their mattresses, or in banks that had neither panic buttons nor security guards. Vincent Cassel fills out the burly hoodlum persona and Mesrine comes across as principally an action-man, a “live in the moment” type, but Cassel also conveys a sense of the cynical egotism that Mesrine might have accessed to justify his actions to himself.

In addition to the novelty of the context and the setting, a criminal story in mid 20^th century France and Canada is not something you come across every day, the film has strong technical elements that help to keep our interest. Principal among these were the way in which shots of the actors were varied between close-ups and full-length shots. A prison-yard sequence is handled well, we are quickly familiarised with the prison’s scale and boundaries through well-selected establishing shots. We are left with a teaser encouraging us to seek out the sequel, Mesrine – Public Enemy Number One, and I will.

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