Mesrine - Killer Instinct - 2009

2 Part film releases are becoming extremely common. First there was Kill Bill in two volumes, the Che is two parts and now the French are getting in on the action. Mesrine Killer Instinct is the first part of Jean Francois Richet's film about the life on one of France's most infamous bank robbers.

My first thoughts on seeing Mesrine was does cinema need another gangster film, especially one which seems to follow so closely so many other gangster films. And for some of the film Richet treads a familiar path. But somehow despite all of this and perhaps because of Vincent Cassel's superb performance Mesrine feels fresh, original, audacious and brilliant. It is one of the best films of the year and one of the best gangster films of recent years.

Part 1 starts the story after Mesrine has left the army where he had been fighting in Algeria. He returns to France and looks to start a life under the control and order of no one but himself. Despite having parents he doesn't respect and feels trapped by the domesticity, he thankfully knows some old friends who are gangsters and so he is quicklt robbing rich homes and meeting up with bigger gangsters who provide the opportunity for such a opportunistic, and entrepenurial robber.

What I really enjoyed about Mesrine was that is didn't seem to conform to traditional narrative styles and structure subverting the history and fact to make an easier to follow film. Characters who seem important are suddenly assassinated, Mesrine goes through a number of lovers in the course of the 2 hours, all of whom seem like real relationships, and the film jumps from year to year, covering the key moments of Mesrine early life in France and exile in Spain and Canada.

Perhaps Mesrine most enjoyable feat is that is wets the appetite for part 2, and the hope that we will see the end of this story. Even if the inevitable is already made clear with films so enjoyable as this, it is the journey that matters and the character, brought magnificently to life by Vincent Cassel. He is mesmerising throughout and he is also not afraid to commit to the moments of weakness and insecurity, even if he seems to revel more in the glamorous violence and romance more often. Cassel is a natural performer and one who can hold his own against heavyweight French icon Gerard Depardieu.

A classic French gangster film, with a seond part in the story come. Che seems to have lost its hold on the monopoly of two part, unrelenting depictions of revolutionaries. Mesrine feels fresh, entertaining and unconventional in a genre which so often lacks all of these elements.