Mesrine: Killer Instinct (2008, Dir. Jean-François Richet)

Just to be confusing, Killer Instinct is only the first half of a two-part biopic of the French gangster Jacques Mesrine, and is given the on-screen subtitle: Public Enemy Number One – Part One. It was swiftly followed by its sequel, distributed in the UK with the title Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1, but with the on-screen subtitle: Public Enemy Number One – Part Two. I am aware of people who have gone to see the second film, completely unaware that they were missing out on nearly two hours’ worth of preceding story. And they really are missing out.

Just to be even more confusing, Michael Mann’s gangster biopic Public Enemies was released shortly beforehand. Mann’s effort, following the life of John Dillinger, was disappointingly dull, moribund even, enlivened only by a couple of cracking action sequences. Cast in the titular role, Johnny Depp was subdued, his performance, unmemorable. Killer Instinct is almost effortlessly superior. For starters, Vincent Cassel is an effusive Jacques Mesrine, always dangerous, always beguiling. Other characters – Gerard Depardieu’s Guido and Cécile De France’s Jeanne Schneider, for example – already subordinate in the script, are almost entirely eclipsed by Cassel’s swagger.

The expeditious narrative momentum is handled confidently by Richet, but I can’t help feel that he does occasionally lose control: Mesrine flirts with a girl he meets in a bar, and then (how much time has passed?) holds up a casino at gunpoint with her; Mesrine’s parents are, one moment, shunned by their son, the next, looking after his children and bidding him a tender farewell as he flees the country. In a sense, the omissions hardly matter – this is not a film that wastes time with exposition – and the breakneck speed is invigorating.

Mesrine’s exile in Canada sees him befriend a member of the Quebec Liberation Front, kidnap his millionaire employer, carry out a double bank heist; all leading to him getting tortured in a grim high-security prison, breaking out, only to then return to the jail in an attempt to free the other prisoners which is so audacious that it would be entertaining even if the resulting fire-fight weren’t brilliantly executed. (It leaves you nearly as breathless as reading aloud that last sentence.) The prolepsis with which the film begins, looking ahead to its sequel, tells us that Jacques Mesrine will return in Public Enemy No. 1 – or, to put it in his own words, “No one kills me until I say so” – but this doesn’t detract at all from the excitement of Killer Instinct.