The gangster film had already been around awhile when the early classics The Public Enemy and Little Caesar were released in 1931. These formed the template for countless films that followed the rise and, usually, fall of a would-be mob boss. Arguably, this formula reached its zenith with the Godfather saga, which also incorporated the trope of family conflict that is nearly as frequent an ingredient in these stories. But filmmakers still try their hand at making something original of the genre. Just a few months ago there was A Prophet, another French film that is superior to this, probably, though this does have a certain visceral energy to it.
These films vary in location, time period, criminal proclivities of the antihero, and so on, but the primary characters generally fall into two types. One is the type who under other circumstances might have done something else with his life, but learn the ruthlessness that underlies criminality. Michael Corleone in The Godfather and Henry Hill in Goodfellas are such characters. So is the hero of The Prophet, who starts off as a scared prisoner. This suspense drama, a true story, is of the other type. If Jacques Mesrine ( Vincent Cassel) was once an ordinary young man, it was at a young age. In an early scene the young Jacques, just back from fighting in Algeria, berates his father for cooperating with the Germans during World War II. "Do balls skip a generation in this family?" he asks. And that's about as much of an explanation as we get for the remarkable criminal résumé that Mesrine would amass, on two continents, in the 1960s and ’70s. It's a record so extensive as to have been compiled in two parts, of which this is the first. (Even with that, the film skips ahead and omits several of Mesrine's documented adventures.)
These films vary in location, time period, criminal proclivities of the antihero, and so on, but the primary characters generally fall into two types. One is the type who under other circumstances might have done something else with his life, but learn the ruthlessness that underlies criminality. Michael Corleone in The Godfather and Henry Hill in Goodfellas are such characters. So is the hero of The Prophet, who starts off as a scared prisoner. This suspense drama, a true story, is of the other type. If Jacques Mesrine ( Vincent Cassel) was once an ordinary young man, it was at a young age. In an early scene the young Jacques, just back from fighting in Algeria, berates his father for cooperating with the Germans during World War II. "Do balls skip a generation in this family?" he asks. And that's about as much of an explanation as we get for the remarkable criminal résumé that Mesrine would amass, on two continents, in the 1960s and ’70s. It's a record so extensive as to have been compiled in two parts, of which this is the first. (Even with that, the film skips ahead and omits several of Mesrine's documented adventures.)
What most gangster films have in common is the man who disregards all rules, and our fascination with that is why they keep making them. Attracting comely women and escaping from prison were among Mesrine’s talents, but it is sheer cockiness that propels him. Cassel is quite charismatic in the leading role. In terms of story, there is not much order to all that happens. Mesrine seems to have been an improviser, which is perhaps why he got caught and ultimately killed. No spoiler this, since it’s shown at the start of the film. The movie never returns to it, though. Instead, it stops in the middle, the story to be picked up in Mesrine: Public Enemy #1, whose title is an homage to one of its classic forebears.
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viewed 8/29/10 at Ritz 5
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