In metropolis Mesrine continues to kill Arabs

Difficult to escape Jacques Mesrine, long, escaped the police before be shot of Clignancourt, Paris, twenty-nine years ago, on November 2, 1979. The gangster is everywhere. The output, in five hundred rooms, the first of two films of Jean-François Richet is riotously: posters, interviews, reprints (including his victims: "Hostages in perpetuity", Jeannine Martigny, éditions Jean-Claude Gawsewitch). The producer Thomas Langmann is sentenced to succeed. He plays left or double with this film. As soon as the first meeting, it will monitor the return on investment. "Mesrine, the instinct of death", inspired by the autobiographical story of the gangster ("The Instinct of death", Flammarion, 389 pages, 21 euros), is a film of learning. Or the "end of an innocence", according to the Director. A brutal end where the soldier Jacques Mesrine suppressant, Algeria, at the end of a member of the FLN. Thus the film, opens before returning to Clichy where living parents, dentelliers shopkeepers. During the war, the father is the STO. It is an orderly man, he would like his son return to the store. But the dentelliers generate rebels: the mother of Céline, already. Jacques will not be in the lace, juror, it will be gangster. His mentor is a human environment, related to the OAS, Guido, desperado fired four pins, remarkably interpreted by Gérard Depardieu. In metropolis, Mesrine continues to kill Arabs. There, he is a pimp who had disfigured a prostitute. The film continues to Quebec where he inaugurated its status of "enemy public number one" alongside Mercier (Roy Dupuis), mi-militant mi-gangster sovereignty, and his love, Jeanne Schneider (Cécile De France).

A certain fascination

Jean-François Richet and Abdel Raouf Dafri, writer, have not resumed the heroic image that has forged Mesrine, communicating formidable, and that the extreme left has enfourchée: that of the informant of the neighbourhoods of high security (QHS), where he was imprisoned between 1973 and 1978, turned into paragon of freedom. Yet, over the nearly two hours of the first branch, Mesrine, this violent nihilistic, appears less unsympathetic. The robber without pity became end Cook, attentive lover, good comrade-in-prison. The ambiguity comes from the character Some, including women, fell under the spell. Others refute this idyllic vision, in particular the Commissioner Broussard, who led the hunt against Mesrine. Is the ambiguity then the result of the prodigious set of Vincent Cassel The actor who did not hesitate to take twenty pounds to play the gangster quarantine overwrites the film of his presence. The interpretation draws strength from that only boundless energy are very large players. The performance is all the more remarkable that the actor has ceased to take distance with this "rebel without cause". He also denied the original scenario too complaisant taste. This is not the case on the other hand of the Director, Jean-François Richet, which recognizes an attraction to this "free man", who was able to say: "no", "this complex character nicknamed the man with a thousand faces". Neither Thomas Langmann, the producer, who hides nor a certain fascination for this individual that he read the autobiography at the age of eleven years and who has always dreamed of this film, after much other Belmondo, Boisset, Costa-Gavras, Lebovici , remind Jean-Pierre Lavoignat and Christophe of Yvoire, in their amazing crossing of the history of cinema French, "Mesrine, thirty years on the run in the cinema" (Sonatine editions)(, 296 pages, 19 euros). Vincent Cassel, even though it is surrounded by the fine flower of French actors, gives the impression to be the film alone. For this simple reason, "The Instinct of death" worth.