Mesrine: L’Ennemi public n°1 (2008) - film review

Following his outrageous criminal escapades in France and Canada, Jacques Mesrine has become Public Enemy N° 1, the man most wanted by both the police and the media.  On his return to France, Mesrine goes Hell for leather to fuel his legend as an unbeatable crime superstar, wooing journalists as he skilfully evades capture by the police.  Surely Mesrine’s good fortune can’t last forever..?

The second part of Jean-François Richet’s ambitious diptych on the life of real-life gangster Jacques Mesrine propels us further and faster into the dark, tumultuous world of a man whose personal crusade against establishment hypocrisy was to make him one of the most notorious criminals of his time.  If you enjoyed the first Mesrine film, this follow-up will definitely not disappoint.  The action sequences are every bit as impressive as those that ignited L’Instinct de mort, but this time there is far more in the way of character depth and we begin to understand something about the man who was both a crime celebrity and France’s public enemy number one.

The film’s political slant is likely to be controversial.  Richet’s sympathies are clearly more aligned with Mesrine than with his police persecutors, and the gangster’s death is unambiguously staged as a state execution, not an ill-judged killing by over-zealous cops.   Mesrine is portrayed as a classic gangster archetype - an outsider who adheres to a strict code of honour, loyal to those who are on his side, but ruthless when dealing with his enemies.  The police and judiciary, by contrast, are shown to be ineffective, cowardly and lacking in moral fibre.  How much of this characterisation is true and how much is poetic licence is open to debate, but Mesrine certainly appears to fit the mantle of the old French film noir gangster anti-hero, perhaps a little too easily.

Mesrine could only have had the impact he did in the 1970s.  This was a decade in which a series of high profile scandals caused the French public to lose confidence with the governing class and become deeply mistrustful of big business.   The entire establishment had a smell of decay about it.  Politicians were considered to be self-serving and authoritarian; the police were seen not as law enforcers but as guardians of a corrupt state.  How else are we to make sense of the public’s fascination for Mesrine?  How else could this serial bank robber and prison escapee succeed in fashioning himself as a modern revolutionary?  The irony is that Mesrine was anything but a revolutionary – he was just a thuggish gangster who stole money so that he could lead an extravagant lifestyle.  And yet the manner of his death was proof positive that he was unequivocally an enemy of the state, one that had to be liquidated, without trial, without fuss, in what was effectively a state-sanctioned political assassination (if you believe this film’s interpretation).  The delightful irony of this is captured beautifully in the film’s final lingering shot, in which the dead gangster is presented to us, almost Christ-like, as a noble martyr.      

Taken together, the two Mesrine films offer a thoroughly compelling cinematic experience that rewards both as a superlative example of the modern gangster film and also as a fascinating exploration of the psychology of one of the most notorious career criminals of the Twentieth Century.   Through his skilful composition of what many now regard as a major work of cinema,  Jean-François Richet has asserted himself as one of France’s most accomplished filmmakers, certainly in the action-thriller genre.  And once again Vincent Cassel leaves us in no doubt that he is one of the foremost screen actors of his generation, with a particular talent for playing complex action heroes with conviction, humanity and seemingly boundless energy.  With a supporting cast that comprises some of the finest acting talent in France today, Mesrine: L’ennemi public n° 1 is every bit as stylish and gripping as the first Mesrine instalment, and might even have you begging for more...

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