Traditionally, French cinema is better know for its slow burning, intellectually challenging arthouse films than for action packed gangster movies. But recent efforts such as A Prophet and last year's Mesrine double bill have proved that our friends across the channel are capable of kicking ass as well as filming ass delicately and tastefully through a soft focus lense.
The latter films, a two part biopic of legendary armed robber and prison breaker Jacques Mesrine directed by Jean Francois Richet, were recently released together in the UK on DVD. They tell the story of Mesrine's journey from a reluctant killer while serving in the army in Algeria in the 1950s to the gun toting underworld kingpin who was the most wanted man in France for much of the 1970s.
The first film, Killer Instinct, is the better of the two, showing how Jacques, played by top French actor Vincent Cassel (La Haine, Oceans 12 & 13) used the ruthlessness he acquired in the army to rise swiftly through the ranks of the Parisian organised crime fraternity, headed by an always charismatic (and now immensely fat) Gerard Depardieu. After his marriage fails and he upsets a few too many rivals, he hides out in Quebec with his new lover, but can't resist a life of crime and ends up inside Canada's most brutal correction unit. Undeterred, he orchestrates an ingenious escape in a tense scene that's the film's highlight, and as the film closes Mesrine is still at large, despite a suicidal return to the prison to try and free his fellow inmates.
Public Enemy Number One is less impressive, as the events of the first installment are largely repeated again and again back in Paris with increasing levels of ludicrousness. Mesrine seduces a succession of impossibly chic women, commits ever more daring crimes, gets captured and then promptly escapes, while all the time relentlessly constructing his own personality cult through a series of clandestine press interviews. Set when the 70s were in full swing, Public Enemy Number One's frequent car chases, shoot outs and vintage hair cuts make it feel a little like a Gallic version of The Sweeney, although Mesrine's irrespressible fondness for implausible disguises also bring to mind the A Team's Hannibal Smith. He even lights a big cigar in one scene while dressed as some kind of moustachioed pornography baron.
The end of the film is unsurprising, and leaves one feeling rather ambivalent about the central character. Jacques Mesrine is not terribly complex or interesting - apart from the first five minutes of Killer Instinct, he's a nasty bastard, albeit an uncommonly resourceful one, and he's still a nasty bastard when Public Enemy Number One ends nearly four hours later.
Rating - 6 out of 10: A watchable account of a remarkable criminal career, but unlikely to challenge The Godfather series in the pantheon of great gangster movies.
No comments:
Post a Comment