Jean-Francois Richet’s new movie Mesrine: Killer Instinct tells the tale of French criminal Jacques Mesrine who was murdered by French police in 1979. The tale is told from the auto-biography of Mesrine, which leads to a sceptical viewing from the start.
Richet’s directing and story reeks of Scorsese, and just regurgitates gangster clichés which are repetitively used by Hollywood gangster movies. For example, falling in love with the most beautiful girl in the room, marrying her, being nagged to spend more time with the wife instead of staying out all night with the wife, abusing her, leaving her, playing poker whilst smoking & drinking, plenty of whores on the side and most importantly: respect.
Richet attempts, maybe under pressure from the auto-biography, to portray Jacques as a man driven to violence due to his time in the army. This however fails to stick – instead Mesrine comes across as a brute before his time in the army due to his actions and once leaving the army joining underground crime seems natural for a man of his nature.
Naturally for a gangster film of this nature and view point consistent violence is shown throughout the movie, but the violence is not even interesting, mainly due to a lack of suspense. This is brought about for two reasons, A) You know that whatever happens Mesrine is going to survive because there’s a sequel to come, and B) You don’t care what happens to Mesrine or any of his associates. The ending being a perfect example in the woods, as soon as the Park Wardens arrive you know they will die, there’s no suspense involved, you’re never left wondering whether Mesrine might show compassion or torture them, instead he just points a gun and shoots, and after two hours of this it’s extremely boring.
This leads to another interesting point. Throughout the film there are just random scenes, in which you don’t know why they happen. Like the death of Mesrine’s best friend and boss, it just happens randomly one night, so Mesrine flees. The film misses chunks of Mesrine’s life out, and this can work in some movies, but this movie is moving so fast that it just doesn’t work and leaves the film lacking character depth, and instead having plenty unneeded shoot-outs and rescue missions.
One point in the film when they try to show character depth, but not understanding, is when they show him in the light of a media superstar in France. There are interesting ways of showing this, and one of them is not to copy Oliver Stone’s dire attempt in Natural Born Killers. This for me was one of the worst moments in the movie and this part of the movie should have attempted to explain in a linear and narrative way why Mesrine became such a superstar in his home nation.
If you enjoy watching mind numbing and generic gangster movies, which are supposed to be a little more credible because it’s foreign cinema then be my guest and waste £5 like I did. Otherwise, steer away from Mesrine: Killer Instinct and it’s sequel and buy a decent gangster movie.
1/5
