Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1

After the somewhat slow and cumbersome first Mesrine film, Killer Instinct, comes part two of the life story of France’s own real-life Robin Hood-style outlaw, and it’s a much more satisfying affair. Vincent Cassel is still somewhat charmless as Mesrine, a man who is a much better bank robber than he is a dad, husband or political figure, but there are vast improvements on the first film to enjoy. Public Enemy No. 1 is faster-paced, it is much, much funnier, it crucially injects a sense of irony into proceedings and it has Mathieu Amalric and Ludivine Sagnier in it, which can only help.

The film kicks off with Mesrine still in the same life pattern – robbing banks, getting caught, escaping, robbing more banks (there are too many heists) – but when he is put away in a high-security prison all seems lost. At last we see Mesrine with a sense of regret, especially when his daughter visits him in prison and he realises what a poor father he has been. She feeds him the killer line, “At least now I know where to find you”. Here he also meets Besse (Mathieu Amalric), and they escape in a great sequence. Amalric was badly under-used as the baddie in Quantum of Solace, but here he is back on form, with eyes even madder than Cassel’s. Together they rob and spread terror across the country until Besse becomes infuriated with Mesrine’s arrogance and pseudo-political babbling.

This is also the film in which women finally get to Mesrine. In the first film they were little more than ganger’s molls, but here Ludivine Sagnier’s Sylvie, who he picks up in a Paris brothel, has real depth, and her vulnerability begins to affect Mesrine’s cockiness. It’s a terrific performance, the perfect balance to Cassel’s still slightly larger than life Mesrine, complete with the de Niro-style beer gut.

Then there’s the humour, which was almost totally lacking in the first film. Here we see Mesrine’s incompetence – he talks the talk of being a Robin Hood figure, but his grasp of politics and economic reality is pitiful. His kidnap of an 82-year-old millionaire goes hilariously wrong, and there are several more gloriously bungled moments and genuinely funny jokes, one involving the Belgian police.

The slow, almost choreographed, final meeting between Mesrine and the police on the Paris streets is tense and gripping, a tour de force. If you can take the slow burn of the first film, this is a great pay-off.

Overall Verdict: Tense, drama-filled and action-packed reward for those patient enough to have sat through Mesrine: Killer Instinct.

Reviewer: Mike Martin