"Mesrine" - Parts 1 & 2
Excellent biopic of real life French criminal Jacques Mesrine, wonderfully essayed by the ever watchable (and nutty) Vincent Cassel.
Mesrine may indeed have been a murderous, unstable, egotist and thug (and the film never sugarcoats this fact) but you have to say he was an amazingly ballsy, driven and fearless individual who genuinely carried out some amazingly daring escapades (his numerous prison escapes are just stunning in their audaciousness)...but his gigantic ego and often delusional self-belief ultimately scupper him at every turn.
Despite the huge running time (about 3hrs 50 minutes combined) this has been expertly crafted to ensure we get plentiful incident and lots of well done (and surprisingly violent) action.
This means that a potentially plodding and overly talkative plot is in fact turned into a fast paced, exciting, engrossing gangster thriller as well as a serious, dramatic, 'worthy' drama.
It does perhaps get a bit jumpy and confused later on as Mesrine gains a (more ego driven than anything truly devout and honest) political slant to his crime spree and the film's fast paced thriller set-up, that makes the film the engaging watch it is, does mean some details we could have done with more information about are skipped over (like his book and his family), but the sacrifice is ultimately worth it because it gives us a rare thing indeed...a nearly 4 hour bio flick that plays like a slam bang action thriller.
Excellent music score too.
Highly recommended!
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