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The Vow

A saccharine and paint-by-numbers slice of romance, which is largely boosted by the appeal of its two leads.

Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace (3D)

The under-utilised 3D adds little to this prequel, which only serves as a sore reminder of the brilliance of the original films.

Any Questions For Ben?

The talented bunch of actors ably cut through the surface gloss, but it’s tough to remain invested in the plight of the self-absorbed lead.

Shame

It starts off as brutal but arresting stuff, and the two lead performances are scorching, but disappointingly dissolves into a case of tragedy for the sake of tragedy.

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Mesrine (Film)

by Erin Free | December 22, 2009 17:56 | Edited December 22, 2009 17:58

Anchored by a bravura lead performance, this is a gripping gangster flick, even with its mammoth running time.

When you think of French cinema, the gangster genre (as opposed to the crime genre, which the French play with better than most) is not one that instantly springs to mind. With the mammoth epic Mesrine (aka Public Enemy No. 1), however, director Jean-Francois Richet (Assault On Precinct 13) has delivered a brilliant Gallic mobster flick to rival any of its far more fancied American cousins.

 

At the film's centre is the brilliant Vincent Cassel - one of the most charismatic and compulsively watchable actors in French cinema history - who makes the most of his opportunities as real life career criminal Jaques Mesrine, offering up charm, malevolence, danger, humour and malice in equally heady doses.

 

It's bravura work, and even on this actor's singularly impressive resume (which includes epochal performances in the likes of Irreversible, La Haine, The Crimson Rivers and Read My Lips), it rates as a career high point. In short, Mesrine is Cassel's Raging Bull, Dog Day Afternoon and Midnight Cowboy all rolled into one.

 

In the film's icy opening scenes, Mesrine is a young soldier forced into inhumane acts during France's military action in Algiers. Seemingly turned off all forms of authority, the young tough drifts into a life of crime, slowly working his way up from standover man to major player in France's criminal syndicates.

 

With no apparent concern for his own life, Mesrine also pulls off a number of daring bank jobs, eventually ending up in prison, where his wild, rebellious stance against the officers makes him a hero amongst his fellow convicts.

 

In the film's most crazed, over-the-top scene, Mesrine escapes from prison, and then returns with enough weapons to start a war, intent on breaking out every man inside.

 

Like all good gangster films, however, Mesrine is as much about the gangster's fall as it is his rise, as his neuroses and almost insane sense of bravado slowly derail his outlaw career.

 

Split into two films (Death Instinct and Public Enemy No. 1) and screening as a double feature, this is undoubtedly one of the finest crime films to come barreling out of France in years.

 

Boasting a massive cast (Cecile De France and Ludivine Sagnier are excellent as two of Mesrine's lovers and partners in crime, while Gerard Depardieu is all oily menace as a senior mobster), extraordinary set pieces, and a crackling, electric sense of pacing that never lets up over its exorbitant running time, Mesrine is so good that it's practically criminal.