Review of Mesrine: Public Enemy #1 (2008) by Will D — 01 Feb 2011

Part Two: Public Enemy No. 1.

The continuing saga of Jacques Mesrine picks up where he left off, on the run from the entire country, finding new cohorts to rob banks with, shooting anyone that gets in his way.

Again, plot and story are not what I will be examining here, but the plight of the French people at the time. Despite his many murders, prison escapes, and ruthless bank robberies, Mesrine still managed to capture the classic Robin Hood image amongst the general populace, hailed as a hero against the opressive French regime of the time.

On to the mechanics of the film. I'm still perturbed that they split this into two movies, since the only seemingly rational reasoning for doing so is people won't watch a 4 hour movie. This is the best 4 hour biopic I've ever seen, a portrait of a man via his crimes. It doesn't waste time on his small moments, but the way the story is put together, we only get his important moments and what makes them important in the grand scheme of his life. The script is excellent, knowing where to leave off, where to pick up, which prison escapes to show, which ones to leave out.

The production value is extremely high, most of the film is shot on location where it really happened, which sent the film crew all across France to get the film shot. The cinematography is one of the shining stars of the film, everything is bright and dreamy, which comes to a stark contrast with Mesrine's life once the gunfire starts and the blood starts flowing.

The gunfights are some of the best committed to film, there is nothing flashy or cool about people being cut down in a hail of gunfire, and this film aims to show you that. The shootouts are bloody and grueling, people die quickly and messily, just like real life.

The f/x are all top notch, with a large people dying on screen from gun violence, these days it's just easier, cheaper, and faster to do bullet hits and bloodletting via CGI. Richet is obviously not from that mindset, as every bloody shootout is filled with physical squibs that messily explode in front of the camera, nothing looks fake, it's a shockingly real portrayal of violence in life.

Of course the biggest part that made this all believable was the acting. Hands down, this will easily stand as Vincent Cassell's best on-screen performance. What must have been a passion project for him evolved into something more. He became Mesrine, both mentally and physically, losing/gaining weight to fit the man as he was. A lot of reviewers will praise a performance as a 'transformation', the simple way of saying they did a great job. However, in these films, Cassell is no longer Cassell. He is Mesrine. He lives, breathes, moves as Mesrine. I truly believe he will go on and continue to do great films, he was excellent in Black Swan, but at the same time, no role will ever require the thought or undertaking that this one did. On every level, he nailed it.

The ending to Public Enemy No. 1 is as exciting as it is sad. Obviously, the life of a criminal almost always has to end badly for him, and Mesrine was no exception. But the stark violence involved, even for a hardened fan of gangster films, it was still a pretty shocking and powerful ending. Easily one of the best gangster films ever made when viewed as a whole, Mesrine is an accomplishment.

9.8/10.