Arizona Reporter - Harvey Critic - 20/07
MESRINE: KILLER INSTINCT (L'Instinct de mort)
You'd think that there was nothing "nice" about criminals. They are people who should be reviled, particularly for crimes of murder and rape. Yet in a New York Times review that cites Norman Mailer's relationship with Utah killer Gary Gilmore, Michiko Kakutani states: "The 'ordinary' criminal who espouses a radical mode of thought, after all, has long exerted a certain hold on the literary imagination. Jean Genet, for instance, who was jailed for theft and male prostitution, was granted a presidential pardon thanks to pleas from Andre Gide, Jean Cocteau, Paul Claudel and Jean-Paul Sartre, and he was later canonized by Sartre in 'Saint Genet.' Eldridge Cleaver, who wrote ‘Soul on Ice' while serving time for rape, was praised by Maxwell Geismar for eloquently illuminating the 'black soul which had been colonized' by an oppressive white society.'' For a time Jacques Mesrine, who once held the title in France of Public Enemy Number One, could have been considered a political prisoner, given his belated support for the Free Quebec Movement. But there is nothing really political about Mesrine. His career makes exciting copy not because he bragged about killing forty people, but because of his charisma, his charm, his ability to escape from high security prisons four times. In fact he escaped so many times that in the end, he was shot dead in cold blood on a Paris street by French police who were tired of locking him up. (This is not a spoiler: the event occurred in real life and the movie "Mesrine: Killer Instinct," opens on his assassination.)
Music Box Films
Reviewed for Arizona Reporter
By Harvey Karten
Directed By: Jean-François Richet
Written By: Abdel Raouf Dafri, Jean-François Richet, from Jacques Mesrine's autobiography L'Instinct de mort
Cast: Vincent Cassel, Cécile de France, Gérard Depardieu, Roy Dupuis
Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 7/20/10
Opens: August 13, 2010
Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) is the principal character of Jean-François's "Mesrine: Killer Instinct," a person who commands attention from movie audiences by his personal magnetism, which includes his ability to talk his way out of a house burglary when confronted by the owners by pretending to be a detective who entered after a break-in is reported. But Mesrine does not remain just a friendly burglar (like our own bank-robbing Willie Sutton, essentially harmless) for long. That's what makes this film, Part One of a two-part thriller cum biopic about one of France's most notorious criminals, so riveting. Not since "Bonnie and Clyde" has a film elicited from me such intense pleasure, though anyone who knows about the acting career of Vincent Cassel (I liked him especially in "Brotherhood of the Wolf," about an 18th century beast who has been attacking women and children) realizes why the man is A-list in French cinema.
Here in the role of Jacques Mesrine (based on Mesrine's own book which has been adapted by Abdel Raouf Dafri and Jean-François Richet), he is a trim, dashing man, at least before Cassel gained 45 pounds to portray the older man in Part Two. He is a fellow who loves women and gets the responses he desires from them, but who on the other hand has honed his criminal craft in Algeria in 1959 by torturing and killing an Algerian captive during France's war with its overseas colony.
For a time he may have gone the other way, settling down with his new, Spanish wife Sofia (Elena Anaya) and their three kids, but she may not have appreciated the way he jammed a pistol into her mouth during an argument. From robbing a bank, then going right across the street to rob another, he finds a motive for several killings, in at least one instance at the behest of Guido (Gerard Depardieu), a gangland boss. When he finds a hip woman, Jeanne Schneider (Cecile de France), who states that she is "up for anything," we think she means sexually, which of course she does, but linking up with her man, she becomes a Bonnie to his Clyde.
If you're looking for deep introspection, some psychological assessment of the criminal mind, you will not find it here: the action is episodic, but the episodes are so compelling that we simply do not, and should not, worry about a lack of deep character analysis. Other characters to which we are introduced include Mesrine's wimpy father and domineering mother (Michel Duchaussoy and Myriam Boyer), Jean-Paul Mercier (Roy Dupuis), who bands together with Mesrine to raise money for the Free Québec movement, and Mesrine's early accomplice, Paul (Gilles Lellouche), who bears some similarity with Mesrine in appearance.
Robert Gantz's camera takes in the scenery in Montréal, Algeria, Arizona, and Paris, using split-screen when called for, while Marco Beltrami deafens the audience with his music.
MESRINE: KILLER INSTINCT (L'Instinct de mort)
Music Box Films
Not Yet Rated. 113 minutes.
© 2010 Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online
Twitter.com/ArizonaReporter
MESRINE: KILLER INSTINCT (L'Instinct de mort)
Music Box Films
Reviewed for Arizona ReporterBy Harvey Karten
Grade: A-
Directed By: Jean-François Richet
Written By: Abdel Raouf Dafri, Jean-François Richet, from Jacques Mesrine's autobiography L'Instinct de mort
Cast: Vincent Cassel, Cécile de France, Gérard Depardieu, Roy Dupuis
Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 7/20/10
Opens: August 13, 2010
Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) is the principal character of Jean-François's "Mesrine: Killer Instinct," a person who commands attention from movie audiences by his personal magnetism, which includes his ability to talk his way out of a house burglary when confronted by the owners by pretending to be a detective who entered after a break-in is reported. But Mesrine does not remain just a friendly burglar (like our own bank-robbing Willie Sutton, essentially harmless) for long. That's what makes this film, Part One of a two-part thriller cum biopic about one of France's most notorious criminals, so riveting. Not since "Bonnie and Clyde" has a film elicited from me such intense pleasure, though anyone who knows about the acting career of Vincent Cassel (I liked him especially in "Brotherhood of the Wolf," about an 18th century beast who has been attacking women and children) realizes why the man is A-list in French cinema.
Here in the role of Jacques Mesrine (based on Mesrine's own book which has been adapted by Abdel Raouf Dafri and Jean-François Richet), he is a trim, dashing man, at least before Cassel gained 45 pounds to portray the older man in Part Two. He is a fellow who loves women and gets the responses he desires from them, but who on the other hand has honed his criminal craft in Algeria in 1959 by torturing and killing an Algerian captive during France's war with its overseas colony.
For a time he may have gone the other way, settling down with his new, Spanish wife Sofia (Elena Anaya) and their three kids, but she may not have appreciated the way he jammed a pistol into her mouth during an argument. From robbing a bank, then going right across the street to rob another, he finds a motive for several killings, in at least one instance at the behest of Guido (Gerard Depardieu), a gangland boss. When he finds a hip woman, Jeanne Schneider (Cecile de France), who states that she is "up for anything," we think she means sexually, which of course she does, but linking up with her man, she becomes a Bonnie to his Clyde.
If you're looking for deep introspection, some psychological assessment of the criminal mind, you will not find it here: the action is episodic, but the episodes are so compelling that we simply do not, and should not, worry about a lack of deep character analysis. Other characters to which we are introduced include Mesrine's wimpy father and domineering mother (Michel Duchaussoy and Myriam Boyer), Jean-Paul Mercier (Roy Dupuis), who bands together with Mesrine to raise money for the Free Québec movement, and Mesrine's early accomplice, Paul (Gilles Lellouche), who bears some similarity with Mesrine in appearance.
Robert Gantz's camera takes in the scenery in Montréal, Algeria, Arizona, and Paris, using split-screen when called for, while Marco Beltrami deafens the audience with his music.
MESRINE: KILLER INSTINCT (L'Instinct de mort)
Music Box Films
Not Yet Rated. 113 minutes.
© 2010 Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online
|
|
|
