ON THE SILVER SCREEN: "MESRINE: KILLER INSTINCT" BRINGS OUT THE BIG GUNS

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By Brian Lafferty

 

August 27, 2010 (San Diego)--Jean-Luc Godard, that great French filmmaker, once said, “The best way to criticize a movie is to make another movie.” When I first saw Mesrine: Killer Instinct, which is the first in a two part series (Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1 will be released next week) I wasn’t very impressed. I felt like I had seen it all before and that the movie wasn’t anything special. That was until I saw Takers a while later.

 

Killer Instinct centers around Jacques Mesrine, one of France’s notorious outlaws. Over the span of two decades and two continents, he robbed many banks, killed many people, and escaped from prison at least four times. He was France’s version of Clyde Barrow.

 

I make that analogy because Killer Instinct heavily evokes the New Hollywood cinema. It has the air of Arthur Penn’s 1967 masterpiece Bonnie & Clyde as well as the early films of Martin Scorsese. The movie felt to me like an homage to these films but that it didn’t quite compare to them. I wasn’t impressed but that didn’t mean I disliked it. I felt the movie didn’t make these homages its own, so in my mind Killer Instinct garnered unwise comparisons to better movies.

 

But seeing Takers changed my attitude towards it. That movie had action and an ensemble cast of well-knowns but it left me feeling empty. Killer Instinct also features bank robbery scenes, a lot of them in fact. But the robberies here are bold and daring. In most movies, the perpetrators plan each detail carefully and execute it with Mission: Impossible-style clockwork. In Killer Instinct, everything happens spontaneously. He goes in, shoots up the place, takes the money, then runs. Every time he robs a bank he becomes more and more gutsy because of his growing status as an outlaw.  The action is exciting and interesting, even if the ideas themselves aren't fresh.  It's all about how they are executed.  The movie runs a little over two hours but it is never boring. 

 

Sure the action was well-done. My favorite was the shootout towards the end, when Mesrine tries to escape from a brutal Canadian prison. I found this particular piece of gunplay exciting because of the way it was staged. There are the guards in the watchtowers and the cops and the escapees on the ground. There is no room for error. Throw in a few grenades and you have a rare shootout that isn’t boring.

 

But the success of the movie is owed in large part to Vincent Cassel. He brings a frenetic energy to his character. He is cold at times but perpetually charismatic. The performance, like his extemporaneous bank heists, exude spontaneity. He is unpredictable as well; he can be a loving father and husband one minute but then fly into a violent rage the next.

 

The opening titles inform us that movies are part fiction and that no film can accurately depict the reality and complexity of human life. Perhaps the filmmakers are being honest with us. Nevertheless, the movie feels very real. Even if the titles are correct, Mesrine gets pretty darn close and that, considering how dangerous Jacques Mesrine was, is scary.


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