2 reviews

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Matt Bright August 9, 2009

In the late 19th century European policing was in the thrall of the theories of Cesare Lombroso, an Italian medic who firmly believed that criminals could be spotted by their facial traits. Thankfully we live in more enlightened times, otherwise Vincent Cassel would actually be in the prison from which his character rather implausibly escapes, and on which he even more implausibly stages an armed assault shortly afterwards. With his hooded eyes and perma-sneer, Cassel would exude languid, predatory menace playing Frank Spencer, let alone one of the world's most notorious and untameable criminals.

That's not to say that Cassel is one-dimensional - his Mesrine is romantic, charismatic and admirably daring. However, while this entertaining if not earth-shattering gangster flick wears its American influences with pride it's a little less in thrall than its ancestors to the idea of the gangster as hero. Mesrine's mentor, Guido (played by Gerard Depardieu with a style, and a waistline, that pays clear homage to the later Brando) is clear that a life of crime is at worst its own death sentence, and at best a passport to a seedy kind of power that's only worth having if you really can't bear the straight life. Mesrine himself, for all his flair, is more Pesci than De Niro - misogynistic, lacking in self-control and capable of astonishing cruelty.

There are some spectacular moments. The interrogation scene in Algeria where Mesrine learns the power of disobedience via a profoundly ambiguous act of mercy uses a shaky camera and ambiguous framing to terrifying effect, while the first prison break is the film's crowning moment - a masterpiece of sustained tension. However, they are strung together in a frustratingly bitty, elliptical manner that suggests this is directed at an audience who already understand what they're seeing and are quite capable of filling in the backstory - Mesrine is as well known in France as, say, the Kray Twins are in the UK. This matters less when the pace picks up and the bullets are flying, but in the early part of the film it makes for a draggy and slightly confusing experience that somehow seems less than the sum of its parts.

This is a two part film - the finale is released some time next month. I'll definitely be going to see the next chapter, but I won't necessarily be expecting as much as I did the first time around.

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Andrew Bell August 9, 2009

L'Instinct de Mort, together with its sequel L'Ennemi Public N°1, make up the two-part Jacques Mesrine gangster saga made by Jean-Francois Richet. This is a bio-pic set in the 1960s and 70s, and chronicles the career of the violent robber, kidnapper and murderer (Vincent Cassel) whose exploits amazed, terrified and fascinated the public in France and Canada.

The director announces that suspense as to the when and how of Mesrine's fate is not his aim by kicking off with a sequence showing his demise in the streets of northern Paris. He concentrates on the increasingly violent events of the first half of his career, the film following the general pattern of some of the James Cagney movies of the 30s and 40s. It also puts one in mind of Jules Dassin's Rififi (1955) and perhaps most of all Bonnie and Clyde. There's an impressive intensity to the filming, exemplified by a fast pace, sharp editing, insistent music, and the episodic structure. Richet highlights elements of chosen episodes from Mesrine's incident packed times – thus we learn of plans for robbing a bank, then cut ahead to the consequent prison sentence after it has presumably gone wrong.

Richet's visual sense is equally intense and he never jibs at close-up violence and torture - I was surprised the film doesn't have an 18 rating. The finest scene of all is a brief foray into John Ford's Monument Valley, a magnificent tribute to the old master's use of the location in so many westerns. For this sequence alone L'Instinct de Mort demands to be seen by people with a sense of cinema history. Vincent Cassel doesn't quite match the gravitas of a John Wayne in The Searchers, nor yet the demonic energy of Cagney, but then who does, and he's still very impressive, building on the style he brought to Sur mes Levres (2001). We are told that Cassel gained 20 kgs for the role leading up to the shoot. The 9 months filming of the two parts was done in reverse chronological order, so that he could progressively lose the weight he gained in preparation of the role, as he felt he would be unable to gain weight while filming.

The problem with the film that I had was that it has little to say about some important questions. Why did Mesrine turn out as he did, given his raising by two inoffensively conventional parents? His briefly-shown experience with the French colonial forces in Algeria, though outrageous, simply does not provide enough meat in constructing a solid explanation. In any case, we receive no clue as to why would Mesrine react against the experience of his early years when 9 young men out of 10 do not? Linked to this is the problem that the violence in him and his abusive attitude to women is there from the start and grows only in degree rather than in nature, so that we lack a sense of a developing, changing character as the picture moves forward.

In quite large measure, therefore, the film leaves the impression of a glamorisation of the chaotic, amoral activities of this man. We are almost invited to empathise with him as some kind of semi-heroic figure, and it seems to me that putting the morality of this to one side, our sense of his motivation and knowledge of any redeeming features he may have possessed makes this an unsatisfactory viewpoint.