Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1

Having crammed exhausting decades of violent crime and prison-breaks into the first half of this movie portrait (Mesrine: Killer Instinct), director Jean-François Richet here calms down to focus on his subject’s final few years. The mayhem doesn’t stop but there’s a key difference between the films, summed up in one stand-out sequence that begins with Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) happily celebrating his arrest by police, and treating his glum captor Commissiare Broussard (Olivier Gourmet) to champagne as the cameras snap. Once in prison though, Mesrine is outraged that terrorist group The Red Brigade has pushed him from the front page. Immediately demanding a typewriter, Mesrine sets about composing his overboard memoirs. If Killer Instinct catalogued its hero’s reign of terror, Public Enemy Number One concentrates on Mesrine’s obsession with his own legend.

Later, Mesrine is in maximum security with fellow armed robber, François Besse (Mathieu Amalric). The pair inevitably team up for break-out and proceed to carry off a number of heists. Amalric wisely takes a back seat to Cassel’s high-powered performance and this in itself underlines the film’s major point; Besse is a professional, keen on rigorous planning and minimising the danger to himself. In contrast, Mesrine is spontaneous, reckless and would rather make the headlines than a clean getaway.

The film is littered with instances of Mesrine comparing himself with various revolutionary groups of the time, desperate to keep a heroic image with the public by using shaky logic to make waving loaded guns at bank staff sound like he’s sticking it to the man. He spends as much time giving interviews to the press as he does hiding out with his floozy girlfriend Sylvie (Ludivine Sagnier).

Considering how publicity hungry he is, it’s a nice touch that Mesrine’s final blaze of glory bookends the film, initially in the form of frantic television news reports, but finally for us, as a cool, matter-of-face sequence, the one time the film gets close to resembling documentary rather than ironic hagiography.

– Film4

Changement de registre pour Jean-François Richet. Sa caméra devient plus nerveuse, la réalisation alerte dans ce second volet toujours aussi convaincant. Vincent Cassel prend du poids et balaie tout sur son passage. Sa prestation intense ne laisse que des miettes aux autres interprètes, tant son charisme fait des ravages. Seuls Olivier Gourmet et Mathieu Amalric tirent leur épingle du jeu.

L’art du déguisement et le sens de l’humour ne sont pas sans faire écho bien sûr à celui de Spagiarri (Sans arme ni haine ni violence), à une exception prêt : l’ennemi public numéro un peut dévoiler une facette plus sombre et violente que le héros du hold-up du siècle. Il reste capable de comettre des actes impardonnables et d’autres où il fait preuve d’une invention exceptionnelle. Nuisible et fanfaron à la fois, le personnage reste incroyablement fascinant et par conséquent cinématographique en diable. Une nouvelle réussite pour ce polar nerveux et haletant porté par un comédien principal fantastique. Son meilleur rôle depuis Sur mes lèvres.

– Zoom Cinéma