A Rebel's Rise and Fall
Mesrine: Killer Instinct
Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1
Directed by Jean-Francois Richet
Killer Instinct, the first of the two-part French gangster film Mesrine, finally opens in the U.S. following a highly praised home turf reception. But it also has the misfortune of coming right after the Anthology Film Archives compelling William Lustig program of crime movies and what Variety calls actioners, where zero-prestige works by Larry Cohen, Henri Verneuil and Giuliano Montaldo raised the B-movie crime film to insightful or, at least, pleasurable and personally-expressive heights. Mesrine doesnt measure up.
From its opening epigraph (All films are part fiction. No film can recreate the complexity of a human life), this biopic of the Algerian War veteran Jacques Mesrinewho became a publicity-seeking thief, kidnapper and murderer throughout the 1960s and 70snever makes the necessary connection between social outlawry and political rebellion like the films Lustig tastily programmed. Screenwriter Abdel Raouf Dafri uses the same specious political/racial parallels as in his script for A Prophet, the fraudulent, bleeding-heart, Muslim-immigrant jailhouse import. Dafris screenwriting specialty combines actioner and guilter.
Dafri botches the balance of genre excitement and social observation that are the key to Larry Cohens creative geniusnot just in the psychological complexity of the Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover, but particularly in his movies of the Blaxploitation eralike Black Caesar, Bone and Hell Up In Harlemthat understood the connection between testosterone aggression and corporate ambition. Dafris thesis that Mesrines criminal spirit was formed by his experience in the Algerian occupation, destroying his moral boundaries then warping his sense of justice and citizenship, becomes a facile dramatic ploya mere excuse for sensationalism.
Because Dafri aims speciously higher, imitating big-budget gangster epics The Godfather and GoodFellaswhich have problematically entered history as nationalist narrativeshe never zeroes in on his protagonists compulsions as Cohens astute classics did. The main difference between Black Caesar and The Godfather (both 1972) lay in Cohen understanding the political moment, while Coppola aimed to mythify the country. Heroizing Mesrine cynically represents Dafris vision of Frances corruption. (De Galle killed us, complains a vet-turned-crook.) Yet this sociological pretensethe essential folly of the gangster epicis morally unprincipled. Dafri and director Jean-Francois Richet seek the audiences enjoyment of Mesrines heinous exploitsneither Cohens economic explanation nor the repulsion that Coppola eventually arrived at for Michael Corleone.
Vincent Cassel, a French Adrien Brody, struts through the role of Mesrine as a peculiarly French, racist-bred, anti-Algerian thug. Resentful of his class, the state and his meek father, an embittered snake hisses beneath Mesrines insolent grin. Its an actorly combination of bravado and romanticism similar to Tom Hardys more complexly imagined criminal biopic Bronson. However, Gerard Depardieu as Mesrines treacherous, openly racist mentor creates more believable menace.
Richet indulges a mugs fetish, using a gallery of macho portraits (Deano Clavet, Gerard Lanvin, Gille Lelouche, Roy Dupuis) to depict Mesrines associates. When Mesrine escapes justice, goes to Canada and joins the Quebec separatist movement to commit more crimes under cover of political imperative (which Dafri does not articulate), the film shifts into an inadvertently comic crime-spree. A kidnapping episode that recalls the Honeymoon Killers is so beside the point of Mesrines Gallic impudence it exposes Dafri and Richets basic lack of seriousness.
In Part Two, subtitled Public Enemy No. 1, Mesrine keeps its epic length, yet gradually loses its cinematic ambition to a mode of mindless TV excitation. The amount of gunplay is so excessive (lots of car windshields shattering) it verges on Michael Mannerismswhich in their flimsiness are essentially TV aesthetics. Its possible that audiences have gotten used to this (from the Miami Vice and crime story series to the HBO gimmick of broadcasting the sopranos in letterbox format), but Mesrines episodic style never deepens.
Only the minimal characterizations of Mesrines various women (Cécile de France, Elena Anaya, Ludivine Sagnier) departs from gangster drama clichésspecifiying their disposable role in the thug-heros life. The sequence where Mesrine puts in a gun in his wifes mouth and threatens her (Ill always choose my friends over you) shows the heartlessness the sopranos sentimentalized. Its the only moment to admit Mesrines psychopathology. Richet and Dafri mostly settle for a grandiose idealization of a rebels rise and fall.
Mesrine summarizes his own legacy: There are no heroes in crime, only men who choose to live outside the law. Yet the films mythologizing flashback structure isnt revealing or scrutinizing like the similar framework of John Boormans more efficient crime biopic the General. Instead, due to TV-quality repetitiveness and pseudopolitical claptrap, Mesrines attempt to rival Hollywood crime movies magnum forceeither through B-movie precision or A-movie elaboratenessfails.