Saturday Night At The Movies
The Gaulfather
By Dennis Hartley
French twisted: Vincent Cassel as Mesrine
In November 1979, a truck full of police sharpshooters ambushed and killed France’s “Public Enemy #1” as he drove down a busy Parisian boulevard with his girlfriend (who was wounded, but survived). Although this violent dispatch was, in essence, a public execution without trial, very few people grieved for the demise of murderer, bank robber, kidnapper, and serial prison escapee Jacques Mesrine. Over the course of his 20 year “career”, Mesrine (who was a sort of French John Dillinger) managed to wreak major havoc, not only in his native France, but in Canada and the U.S. as well. A folk hero to some, Mesrine fancied himself to be a sort of underworld Renaissance man-master of disguise, self-styled “revolutionary”, and author (he composed an autobiography during one of his numerous prison stints, which was later adapted and published). If there was one thing he loved more than the thug life, it was watching and reading about himself in the media (he once nearly killed a French journalist for writing an unflattering article). I suspect that he would have been especially gratified to have lived to see the day that he became the subject of an epic crime film diptych, currently in limited release in the U.S.
Director Jean-Francois Richet and his co-writer Abdel Raof Dafri adapted Mesrine’s autobiography, L’instinct de mort, into two films-Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Mesrine: Public Enemy #1. With a combined running time of 4 hours and change, you are going to need a dynamic leading man in order to keep your audience riveted, and the edgy, explosive Vincent Cassel (La Haine 
, Eastern Promises 
) proves to be up to the task here.
Despite having the luxury of such a broad canvas, Richet doesn’t linger much on roots and formative years; opting instead to kick off the first film with a brief glimpse of Mesrine’s hitch in the French army, during which he served in the Algerian conflict. In an uncompromisingly brutal, tough-to-watch scene (which sets the tone for both films) the young Mesrine beats a captured Algerian insurgent nearly senseless at the behest of his commanding officer, who is conducting the interrogation. When this treatment fails to yield the desired information from the dazed prisoner, the man’s sister is paraded out, and Mesrine is commanded to commit a horrible act of cold-blooded murder. For the only time in either film, Mesrine seems reticent to follow through; suggesting, for one infinitesimal moment, that he actually has a conscience. Once he pulls the trigger, however, Mesrine (and the viewer) knows, in no uncertain terms, that he has crossed over to the dark side, from which he will never return. Whether the director is inferring that the military breeds sociopaths, or that water seeks its own level, is open to interpretation.
There is quite a bit left open for interpretation, throughout both films, vis a vis what made Mesrine tick. With the possible exception of the aforementioned scene in Algiers, we are presented with Mesrine the fully formed career criminal-type, straight out of the box, as it were. He gets out of the army, meets and marries his second wife, a beautiful Spanish woman (Elena Anaya), and takes a half-hearted stab at a few straight jobs. However, once he falls under the mentorship of a powerful local gangster (Gerard Depardieu) he comes to realize his true calling-taking what he wants, when he wants, and by any means necessary. The first film follows his activities in Europe through the late 60s and then his North American crime sprees with partner Jean-Paul Mercier (Paul Dupuis) from 1969-1972, including bank robberies, the murder of two Canadian forest rangers, and a failed attempt to break friends out of jail (following their own escape from yet another facility).
The second film covers Mesrine’s return to France in 1972, when he picked up where he had left off-participating in bank robberies, kidnappings, and brazen jailbreaks, which finally earned him his “public enemy #1” moniker from the exasperated French law enforcement authorities. The second film is a little more compelling than part one, as it provides an interesting nemesis for Mesrine, commissioner Broussard (Olivier Gourmet). The two men have a sparring relationship of begrudging mutual respect, much like the (fictional) characters played by Al Pacino and Robert deNiro in Michael Mann’s Heat
. Part two also benefits mightily from the presence of one of my favorite French actresses, Ludivine Sagnier (as Mesrine’s girlfriend at the time of his death), who has that kind of earthy, sexually-charged intensity that Ellen Barkin brought to many of her early roles.
Taken as a whole, the 4-hour narrative begins to run out of steam about ¾ of the way through, mostly due to the rote sequencing and repetitive nature of Mesrine’s exploits; he robs a bank, gets caught, goes to jail, breaks out of jail, robs more banks, gets caught…well, you get the picture. Cassel’s performance, as good as it is, teeters on the edge of becoming a one-note acting exercise. Maybe we didn’t need to inventory every crime the man ever committed. I could have used a bit more insight into Mesrine’s motivations. That being said, Richet is a promising filmmaker, showing a particular penchant for kinetic action sequences, and his recreation of France’s 1970s socio-political milieu is quite canny (I was reminded at times of Fred Zimmerman’s The Day of the Jackal
).
So is this a recommendation? If you are a true-crime buff, I think you will like this. The real Mesrine, repellant as his actions were, was a fascinating character, and it is almost mind-blowing at what he got away with, and for how long (especially considering how much he enjoyed the spotlight, courting the media whenever he got the opportunity). And how was he able to escape so many times? Couldn’t they figure out a way to keep this guy locked up, especially after the first 3 or 4 escapes and re-apprehensions/trials? Or maybe if the director had asked himself some of these questions, the film(s) could have been that much more interesting? Well, you know what the French say… C’est la vie.
Previous posts with related themes:
The Baader-Meinhof Complex
