Reviews
OH NOES! It's all in that French! Whatever will we do?
Mesrine [pronounced here as Me'rine] is to the French what Andre Stander was to the South Africans. That is to say he's very famous in his country of origin and almost utterly unheard of anywhere else. Also they both robbed banks.
Before that though, we first see Jaques Mesrine [played by Vincent Cassell from La Haine for the educated, and Guest House Paradiso for the rest of us] as an older man. Portly and dour looking, this is not the swaggering French Fox we've been led to believe will be doing the heavy lifting in this movie. And he's not, a fact you get confirmed moments later when a shit load of people pile out of a truck and take aim at the guy and his missus, before opening fire.
Cut straight to Mesrine's past, during the French occupation of Algeria. He's forced to take part in torture and interrogation, which doesn't sit well with our man Jaques and fuels his later disrespect and unease with authority.
He returns home and gets in with his old mate Paul, who introduces Mesrine to a life of crime and the whole film really kicks off from here. Killer Instinct is the first of two chapters, covering Jaques’ early life and criminal career, where he learns on his feet and quickly discovers that robbing one bank only to nip across the road to rob that one as well can get you some note.
The character is intriguing, romantic and sympathetic one minute with his troubled memories of war and a complete dickhead the next, slapping his wife about the place like Bing Crosby at Christmas. It's difficult to get a handle on him at times, which is possibly down to the films pacing. It jumps forwards in the timeline at almost breakneck speed, wherein lies my only problem. All the way through this film I got the feeling that everything I was seeing was a protracted origin story. It's the first half an hour of Spider-Man stretched to last 120 minutes then run through in 90. You barely have time to get to grips with Gérard Depardieu as Mesrine's criminal mentor Guido, when suddenly we're in Spain and there's this girl, so you think OK let's talk to her but no because we're off to Canada and then back to France etc...
Granted the guy was all over the place in those early years, what with being on the run a lot, but there's no concession made to leaving out the unnecessary. Director Jean-Francois Richet obviously has a love for the character, but has been unable to choose just the most compelling or important of his exploits and has decided to try and show you all of them for about ten minutes each. A decision, which leaves the movie feeling episodic and jerky.
Cassell is excellent as the anti-hero Robín Hóód type [see the accents there? That's cuz he's a French], but everyone else comes and goes too quickly to leave much of an impression.
Overall Killer Instinct was good, but felt too much like a film trying desperately to squeeze into a skinnyfit timeframe, only to have you make polite conversation while constantly checking your watch to see when the other sister [movie] would arrive.
No stars, but you should go see it only if you're planning on watching Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1 or are French.
Mesrine: Killer Instinct - Brought to you by Gazz Wood -