Mesrine: Killer Instinct (2008)

  This is part one of a pair of films based on the life of French criminal Jacques Mesrine (pronounced Meh-reen), based on his autobiography.  If even half of this is true, this guy had the biggest balls you've ever seen.

After an early career in the French Army and a rough assignment in Algeria, Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) returns home but finds a provincial life just will not do.  His friend, Paul (Gilles Lelouche), gets him hooked up with a local gangster, Guido (Gerard Depardieu) as an enforcer, thief, and general bad man.  He also meets his wife, Sofia (Elena Anaya), has three children and goes to prison the first time.  Afterwards, he tries to go straight but the lure of easy money and violence is just too strong.  Sofia splits and he meets the Bonnie to his Clyde, Jeanne (Cecile de France).  The two larcenous lovebirds move to Canada and kidnap a billionaire for ransom, but the scheme goes wrong and everyone goes to prison.  Jacques discovers that maximum security is way worse than anything he's ever experienced and makes plans to bust out as soon as he can.  He and his new friend Jean-Paul Mercier (Roy Dupuis) escape in broad daylight, then turn around and attack the prison as soon as they gather some firepower.

This was an absolutely insane true story.  According to the end credits, after Mesrine's attack, the government actually looked into the prison conditions and shut the place down.  So, yay?  I guess?  That doesn't begin to balance the scales from all the terrible things he did but it is pretty entertaining. Like I said, I have no idea how much of this is actually true and how much is creative license by the author.

Cassel does an incredible job with the intensity of this role.  Mesrine is not a likable guy and in the wrong hands, this could have been a masochistic slog.  Instead, Cassel is able to lend some serious charisma to the part.  The only real issue I had with the film was the pacing.  It moves at a breakneck speed trying to fit years worth of criminal activity into a couple of hours.  As a result, it feels very rushed in parts and then slow in others.  Still, it's not like I've seen a lot of contemporary French films so I can't really judge.  Maybe that's a stylistic trend.  I don't know.  It's a decent crime biopic.  I'll be interested to see the second part.