Mesrine: Public Enemy Number 1

The Vincent Cassel performance juggernaut continues with these further adventures of French criminal mastermind, Jacques Mesrine in Part Two of this bloated gangster epic, following on from the release of Mesrine: Killer Instinct earlier this month.

Frustratingly failing to pick up where we left off, Public Enemy Number 1 is something of a French Fugitive. Now a notorious criminal, Mesrine's most wanted tag has created a socio-political ego that threatens his need to remain underground. So we have more face changes than The Saint, and a penchant for ever-elaborate bank robberies that leads to his already depicted downfall.

It's tempting to cut and paste one's reaction to the first instalment because this really is just more of the same. It's still held together by a larger than life central performance, literally this time.   As well as eating up the screen, Cassel has devoured a lot more in the way of nourishment in his efforts to go “method”, giving the greedy gangster a paunch De Niro would be proud of.

The film still has the same episodic feel to the proceedings as Part One; rob a bank, hit a casino, go to prison, escape, rob a bank, and so on and so forth, and the choppy time shifting device is even more jarring. Par example, a drawn out, hot footed pursuit across the countryside with sniffer dogs hot on the trail suddenly shifts to a worry free Mesrine on the pull in Paris. There is no explanation; it's a cinematic crime he would be proud of.

This time we are thankfully given numerous partners in crime, most notably in the form of Quantum of Solace's lizard featured Mathieu Amalric. Teaming up during the excellent wall scaling prison break, Amalric gives a nice bit of balance to the narrative, now that Cassel has morphed from the cocksure young criminal into the detestable fundamentalist, who's willing to cross the line during one particularly nasty torture scene.

Despite failing to reach the heights of part one, there are still plenty of excellent flashes here. There is a notable sense of humour that had previously been lacking and a rare scene of genuine tension during a countryside road block that provides one of the few sequences to actually play out to a climax.

The films finale is a perfect epitaph for this two part tale.  There is no Heat style face off, no trumpeting of a fallen anti-hero, and strangely none of that customary wrap up text. After the flashy set up of the superior Killer Instinct, much like Mesrine himself, this ends with something of a whimper, when you'd expected a bang.