‘Mesrine: Killer Instinct’ breaks mobster story into two parts

Published 8:22 pm Wednesday, August 25, 2010

About 15 minutes before the end of “Mesrine: Killer Instinct,” I looked at my watch and wondered how on earth the movie was going to wrap up its saga in time.

Then I remembered: “Killer Instinct” is merely the first part of an epic of modern crime. Its conclusion, “Mesrine: Public Enemy #1,” will arrive next week.

The long-form treatment might seem exorbitant, but Jacques Mesrine was something of a giant figure in larceny (though much better known in Europe and Canada than here). In the 1960s and ’70s, he committed serious crimes, escaped from jails and traveled around the globe, lasting far longer than amateurs such as John Dillinger or Bonnie and Clyde.

“Killer Instinct” begins with Mesrine’s death in a hail of police gunfire on a Paris street in 1979, then flashes back to tell his life story. Ingenious and cold-blooded, Mesrine makes his mark with a mob boss (a massive Gerard Depardieu), works his way up the system, and even marries and starts a family.

Eventually, his trail leads to North America, where he and a female accomplice (Cecile De France, “High Tension”) bungle a bizarre kidnapping scheme, and where Mesrine leads a spectacular prison break from a high-security prison in Quebec.

Director Jean-Francois Richet, who made the U.S. remake of “Assault on Precinct 13,” keeps all of this barreling along. Mesrine had a wild life, so there’s no shortage of violent, colorful incidents.

Because Mesrine is about as sympathetic as Al Pacino’s mobster in “Scarface” — which is to say, he’s a monster out for himself — the actor playing him needs to carry around considerable charisma. He must convince us that Mesrine could bull his way through life by influencing other people, and he must make the character complex enough so we keep watching.

The actor on tap is hawk-faced Vincent Cassel, from “The Brotherhood of the Wolf” and the “Ocean’s Twelve” and “Thirteen” pictures. He’s up to the challenge: Cassel strides through the picture knocking over everybody else like bowling pins, furious with his own hostility and shrewd about using his notoriety to create public interest.

The first part is rounded off, but also leaves the door open for the second movie. Which we’ll report about in full a week from today.