L'instinct de mort
Tags: violence, murder

Plot synopsis:
=== Part 1 ===
Part 1 depicts Mesrine's life from 1959 to 1972, beginning with his time as a member of the French Army during the Algerian War, where he was forced to shoot and kill prisoners and bomb-makers. On his return to France, he moves into his parents' home, where he reunites with his mother and his father. After an argument about getting an honest job, he meets with his old childhood friend, Paul, who is wealthy now and drives a sports car. They soon get into robbery business with Paul's boss, Guido, and from him, he obtains a Citroën DS as a loan. Later, Guido and Mesrine kill Ahmed, an Arab pimp who beat up Sarah (one of his girls and Mesrine's girlfriend), and bury him in the countryside and drive off.
Using Guido's status as a local crime boss as protection from their enemies, after committing some robberies, Paul and Mesrine briefly leave France for the Canary Islands, where Mesrine meets and falls in love with Sofia, who moves to France with him, and they marry. However, although they have a daughter, and later two sons, Mesrine continues to be in the robbery business, causing him to get arrested and sent to prison in late 1960. He is released in 1962, and although tries to keep a steady job and be honest, he is fired over financial crisis, and dreams of easy money get him back into 'the business'. One night, Guido and Paul arrive and Mesrine prepares to leave with them, but Sofia yells at him and tells him that she will call the police, on which Mesrine snaps, slaps her, drags her across the stairs, and shoves a gun into her mouth and threatens her in front of Guido and Paul before departing. Later they divorce, leaving him custody of the children.
In 1966, Mesrine, now a gangster, goes into a bar. A woman named Jeanne Schneider comes on to him and the pair quickly fall in love. Jeanne is cut from the same cloth as Mesrine and the pair begin to commit robberies together. After stealing from a mob operated casino, the pair attract the attention of local mob bosses. In 1968, while walking with his young daughter, several men pull a 'drive-by' on Mesrine, wounding him. Guido treats him for his injuries, and suggests that he should leave the country until the things cool down, to which Mesrine agrees. He packs, leaves his kids in custody of his parents, and departs from France, traveling to Canada with Jeanne.
Later, in Montreal, he works as a construction worker on the Champlain Bridge, where he meets a Quebec resident, Jean-Paul Mercier, and they become friends. Mesrine is denied residency in Canada due to his criminal past but he remains there illegally. He and Jeanne hatch a plan to kidnap and hold a French-Canadian billionaire, a decrepit man paralyzed from the waist down. They gain access to his home by taking the jobs of a maid and a chauffeur. After several months, they put their plan into practice, kidnapping the man and spiriting him away to a flat in the city. While Jeanne and Mesrine are away to try and collect the ransom money, the man manages to crawl to the balcony, break the glass, and call for help. The billionaire is taken away by paramedics just as Mesrine and Jeanne arrive back at their apartment. They flee, escaping across the border to the United States. They are subsequently captured in the Arizona desert, while at about the same time, Guido and Paul are murdered back in France by an unknown assailant.
Mesrine and Jeanne are sent back to Canada, where Jeanne is sentenced to 5 years, and Mesrine is sentenced to 10 years. He is sent to the Saint-Vincent-de-Paul prison, where he is exposed to extreme torture and pain. Nevertheless, he still plans to break out of prison. After reuniting with Jean-Paul, also held in the same prison, he meets Roger André, another prisoner, who helps him and Jean-Paul escape through the fence on a Monday, when the guards in the watch towers are hung over from the weekend. Soon after, they arrive near the border, where Jean-Paul meets Sylvie Jeanjacqout, and he falls in love with her. They hatch a plan to break Roger and friends out of prison, which does not go as intended. While Mesrine and Mercier are mounting the assault on the prison, they are both wounded. Roger is shot and killed.
Later Mesrine manages to call Jeanne, to tell her he plans to break her out of prison, but, fearful for them both and wanting to abandon her old life of crime, with the prison weakening her, she severs her ties to him. Mesrine and Jean-Paul continue on with the robberies, and while having target practice in the woods one day, they are caught by two forest rangers, and forced to kill them and leave them. Mesrine says to Jean-Paul, "If they catch us now, we'll hang."
The end credits roll. Notation concludes that Jeanne was released after serving her sentence, and went back to France to live freely, while Jean-Paul split with Mesrine and was shot dead a year later while robbing a bank. Mesrine's story is 'to be continued' (in part two).
=== Part 2 ===
The second film is about Mesrine's life from 1972 until November 2, 1979, the day of his death. The story starts back in 1972, with Mesrine returning to France after departing from Canada. He is now with Sylvie, who becomes his new girlfriend. He returns to Paris and commits more robberies. However, in March 1973, he is arrested after a successful heist, but as he is transferred to the courtroom, he requests to use the bathroom, and retrieves a pistol hidden in the toilet tank. He brandishes the gun in the court, forces the guards to uncuff him, and takes a judge hostage temporarily, while his apprentice, Michel, awaits, and the duo escapes. He returns to robberies with Michel, but his reckless behaviour (including robbing two banks at the same time) causes Michel to abandon Mesrine. After two months, French intelligence locates Mesrine's apartment, and Commissioner Broussard negotiates with Mesrine, who surrenders. He is brought to court and sentenced to 20 years in La Santé Prison.
During his time in prison, he reunites with his daughter, after 12 years of absence, and she is also present when he pleads his case in court. He then writes a book about his life, which angers his lawyer, who states that his biography places him in a difficult position, since he confesses to everything in public, but he rebuffs it. He also meets François Besse, another convict and his solitary confinement neighbour, and hatches an escape plan; Besse smuggles pepper spray through a cookie box in prison (which can pass through the detectors since it's covered in aluminum foil), while Mesrine meets with his lawyer, who smuggles dual handguns in her briefcase. Mesrine informs the guard to bring his case file from Besse's cell and Besse attacks and subdues the guards with the spray, Mesrine then attacking them as well. They take their uniforms, take another prisoner as a cover and head over the wall, where the prisoner is shot while trying to escape with them. They manage to get away.
After several other robberies, Mesrine fools the media, calling himself "a revolutionary", and professing to bring Palestinian armed forces to slay the French government. This angers Besse, and he leaves him. A year later 1979, Mesrine is living a wealthy life and buys himself a 1974 BMW, and contacts his old friend from prison, Charlie Bauer, and they also start a series of robberies. Mesrine becomes more and more dillusioned with the media, secretly meeting with reporters and giving controversial interviews. He also kidnaps a local billionaire, Henri Lelièvre, and holds him for ransom, and then sets him free after being paid. Sylvie is more and more worried about Mesrine, and convinces him to leave the country. Meanwhile, Mesrine kidnaps Jacques Tillier, who wrote an article about him that he doesn't like, and makes him strip naked, then beats him and shoots him, presuming him dead. Mesrine finds out the next day that Tillier survived the ordeal.
On November 2, 1979, Mesrine and Sylvie leave their apartment disguised, with Sylvie taking her poodle, but Broussard's men are after them. After checking the area, Mesrine and Sylvie arrive at their car and drive off. Broussard is stuck in traffic and runs after them. At an intersection, a truck blocks Mesrine's way, and the back tarp is thrown open, revealing armed police gunmen, who immediately open fire and shoot him dead. Broussard arrives, and orders a hysterical and injured Sylvie and her dog to be taken away, and grimly looks at Mesrine's dead body.

Review: But, were I to be placed in a room with a genuine gangster, I'm certain I would be terrified and would want to get out of there ASAP.The film opens with Mesrine making a decision whilst in the French army and in Algiers whether to follow his superior's orders to shoot the wife of a terrorist suspect or to shoot the suspect.
This moment, as well as establishing that Mesrine has the killer instinct of the title, shows us that he is not one for conforming to authority, as he ignores his superior and takes the shot.From that point, the film is episodic as it follows Mesrine from petty crime to audacious criminal exploits.
His charisma, very ably aided by Vincent Cassel's own screen presence, shines from the screen whether talking his way out of house or defiantly standing up to his brutal treatment when he is finally caught and incarcerated.He was imprisoned and brutally treated, following a one man / one woman crime wave across the world and, as part of his escape plan he assured those helping him that he would return to break them out.
Funny, disturbing, charming, psychotic and more Cassel is the larger than life criminal achieving a completely believable character study of someone the French press dubbed 'the man of a thousand faces' due to his ability to change his looks so often to evade the police.
In fact the truth behind this most notorious of stories is so unbelievable at times that the filmmakers left parts out thinking the audience would think it was just too far fetched, in fact after watching the escapades of Mesrine I too thought 'all that couldn't have happened surely?' But after a little bit of homework I found that it did indeed all take place and after seeing the tale unfold you realise why Mesrine got his Monika.
The film, told in two parts, opens with a brilliant seventies cop style feel and begins at the end before returning us to the start where we see a young Mesrine in the army fighting in the Algerian war, on his return to his native Paris he quickly becomes entangled with Guido a mafia boss played superbly by Gerard Depardieu (why had no one cast him in this kind of role before?) and over the course of the next four thrilling hours he rises to become the career criminal that became an embarrassment to the French police and government.
That's exactly what Jean-François Richet did with Death Instinct, the remarkable first part in a two-movie story about famous French criminal Jacques Mesrine.Like most other biopics, the film opens with the protagonist's death, and what a spectacular demise that is: gunned down by unidentified shooters in the middle of a crowded Parisian street.
Even there, however, he just can's stay away from trouble.Richet is certainly no Michael Mann (an obvious reference when it comes to the robbery scenes), but he tells the story with gusto and precision, staging the tale as if it were a traditional gangster movie: taste of power, discovery of the unpleasant consequences, fight until the end to reach the top.
From start to finish, Killer Instinct moves at a reasonably quick pace, asking the viewer for commitment and endurance, and deservedly so: it's one hell of a thrilling ride.If one has to complain, it should be noted that the psychology of certain characters is a bit sketchy (Guido is really nothing more than the average gangster type), but that flaw is generally compensated by very solid acting.
Returning to the more troubled side that has been left pretty much unexplored since La Haine, he digs into Mesrine's dark psyche and re-emerges with a complex, chilling part that makes him deserving of the his widespread reputation as one of France's best young thespians.As for the deliberately open ending, the final captions are clever but a bit smug: after revealing the fate of characters who won't return in the follow-up, the title card says "As for Jacques Mesrine...
The "Goodfellas" ensemble of the first part becomes the isolated, ego-driven "Scarface" of the second as Cassel skilfully matures his character into a man resigned to the fate he knows must be coming.The over all impression left by "Mesrine" is that it manages to land successfully between crime thriller, gangster saga and character study.
Vincent Cassel is very good, and the film is full of suspense; it neither demonises nor glamorises its protagonist, and interestingly, sets his story against the backdrop of the political violence of the 1970s, which had a superficial interest to Mesrine as he built his own legend.
The movie is an absolutely brilliant genre movie, with amazing actors at their best, an incredible recreation of seventies France, very realistic and visceral action scenes (all based on facts by the way !), and Richet's directing is very controlled, precise, you feel he knows what he wants, sort of the anti-Brett Ratner if you will, and the ambiance is spot on too.
Based on the true story of gangster Jacques Mesrine - Mesrine presents the rise and fall of France's most notorious criminal through a two-part showcase; wherein a series of hold-ups, prison breaks and kidnappings, give us an insight into 'The Man with 1000 Faces'.
But to think of him as just another criminal would be an unreasonable caricature.In this first half of the notorious gangster's life, director Jean-Francois Richet evinces the louche charm of the French criminal underworld in an effort to depict Jacques in a sympathetic light.After a troubling time soldiering in the Algerian War, Jacques returns to Paris, where before long his sense of dissatisfaction takes charge of him and he accepts a friend's offer of 'off-the-book work', i.e. crime.He is introduced to Guido (Gerard Depardieu), the head of a right-wing terrorist group operating in France's underworld.
Starting in the late fifties in Algeria, where French soldier Jacques Mesrine served in the foul war of independence, we get a clear picture of his development as a master-criminal.Although I think it difficult to judge the historical precision of its plot, this very French film surely makes a good watch.
The two Mesrine movies are easily the best gangster movies of the last years and can without a doubt be described as the French Godfathers even though the two films have not exactly the same class as the legendary masterpieces.The thing that is really interesting about this movie is that it is told after true events and partially based on the autobiography of the French gangster and public enemy number one Jacques Mesrine.
This movie is not just a gangster saga filled with action and tension but has also an emotional touch of the drama genre and some dark and sarcastic humour.Mesrine is perfectly portrayed by one of the best contemporary actors coming from France which is Vincent Cassel.
The movie also slightly criticizes the corruptive justice and police in France as well as the way how the medias deal with Mesrine's fate and make an iconic modern Robin Hood out of a dangerous and ignorant gangster that begins to use the medias for his own good and enjoys the show.As you can see, the movie contains many different elements and details that make it a very diversified, intense and still entertaining gangster movie which happens to be one of the best of its kind.
If you happen to like this movie, you should absolutely try to get the German gangster and terrorist movie "Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex" which is also based on true events and happened at the same time as Mesrine became the public enemy number one in France.
The French movie has also some connections to those events as Mesrine talks from time to time about it as you should have noticed.In the end, this movie about an extreme and charismatic character is way more than an excellent gangster movie with some social criticism but a gripping two hours of history class.The only reason why I didn't give the highest possible note is that I would have liked to learn more about the youth of Mesrine.
For a start you return to your roots and you return to what you know, which is precisely what director Jean-Francois Richet has done as he presents the first installment of a two part tale detailing the life of Jacque Mesrine, France's most notorious criminal.
The man who was once known as France's "Public Enemy No1" provides an interesting and engaging story, as anyone of such notoriety would, as his life charts an almost unpredictable path across countries and continents but as with all literative adaptations, does it translate onto the big screen?Well, aside from the fact that no "big screen" has shown this film, and that all viewings have been in smaller independent picture houses reserved for the cine-literate, the tongue-in- cheek answer is no.
Jacques Mesrine, as frighteningly portrayed by the excellent Vincent Cassel, is a man whose life is a nonstop roller-coaster of carnage and violence, he is a man who is utterly incapable of escaping the life he leads and what's more is that he has no notions of leaving it, not even when the wife of his two children pleads with him to remain on the straight and narrow.
We have seen hostage taking go wrong in Dog Day Afternoon, unfortunately for Mesrine his life is nothing new to those that have already been initiated into the film world, and while retelling these specific events from his own personal standpoint is not a cardinal sin the unoriginality with which it is filmed is.Having viewed the initial five minute opening segment of "L'instinct de mort" you can be forgiven for expecting something more slick, stylish and, frankly, French than what is presented.
Well now it's done.In real life, Jacques Mesrine is certainly the most famous gangster in France along with Albert Spaggiari whose life and criminal activities are also astonishing, and whose anti-hero Robin-Hood-like status in popular opinion is as strong.
I don't think there will be another movie about Mesrine in a while, because it will be hard to top this one.All you need to know about the plot is that it's about a real-life gangster known for his heists and numerous prison escapes, which made him a sort of cult anti-hero.
Mesrine: Killer Instinct opens on one of the most admirably up-front disclaimers ever to introduce a fact-based film, stating not merely that some of the events have been dramatized, or that names have been changed, but frankly that no movie can ever account 100% for the entire life of a person.
But as the film hearkens back to the beginning and starts to accelerate, it comes to explode with violence of Scarface proportions, a perhaps too bombastic orchestral score, and a virtually streamlined focus on the events we've seen in every gangster biopic.After having seen this film, I've read a little more about Jacques Mesrine, who described all his robberies and killings as acts liberating him from the state, which may perhaps cause these films to elicit an above-average response for foreign films in the U.S., Killer Instinct finally making its way through flyover country at a peak time when Americans feel knee-jerk reactionary impulses to antagonize the state, impulses that will only dig us an increasingly deeper hole, just as Mesrine's do him.Vincent Cassel is vigorous, forceful and captivating as Mesrine, personifying the man via decades of bodily and academic transformation, from his days as a fighter in Algeria, to his days of incarceration, to his most despicable impulses, offenses and displays, to instances of emotional and raw intimacy, to his sincere tussles with self-identity.
Somehow Vincent Cassel captures the pure evil of Mesrine and presents him as the charismatic and powerful figure he evidently was.Having apparently lost his soul during the war in Algeria, Mesrine joins forces with a local crime lord played by French acting legend Gerard Depardieu.
Director Jean-Francois Richet does an excellent job of displaying the menace of Mesrine and the absolute lack of morals he flashes.The film never drags even while he is on the lam through Canada and the U.S. Since the film is broken into two parts (Public Enemy #1 will be released in a few weeks), I found it very interesting that the first films opens with what appears to be the end of part two.
This studying of Mesrine's life ultimately kicks off in Algeria, in 1959, and the serving of his military service; his ruthlessness in the executing of a prisoner, whom we assume to be a terrorist of some kind as they badger him for the whereabouts of a bomb, and the coming to realise that the general attitudes of the French Army eerily echo that of the attitudes and actions of Mesrine the gangster and the underworld bosses themselves we observe later on, during which cold blooded murder is the run of the mill.It's at this point the conflicted image of Mesrine the film wants us to have of him, in our siding and hatred of him, is nicely set up so as to be poised for the rest of the film.
Mesrine gives hip some gyp, goes to pull his gun on him but the boss already covertly took it off him as he entered the room; Mesrine is humbled, caught short so early on in his criminal career – the film signifying early on this wants to be as grounded as possible in portraying a criminal as someone whom cannot bound from interaction to interaction, wading into everyone and everywhere and dominate surroundings; antithetical when compared to a text such as 1971's Get Carter or one of Westlake's Parker novel filmic adaptations.At one point, Killer Instinct will plunge us into a prison and the immense suffering of Mesrine at the hands of prison officials whom purposefully carry nameless; faceless and apparently soulless characteristics, best highlighted in the suit-clad chief warden: robotic in his actions and says very little; taking pleasure in his observing of Mesrine and the other inmates in the exercise yard through a small squared window, watching them as if they were animals in a zoo.
'Mesrine: Killer Instinct' (2008) and 'Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1' (2008) are two great films filmed back-to-back telling the life and crimes of legendary French criminal Jacques Mesrine.
'Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1' (2008) The second film follows on from the first but as with any crime biopic (Blow, Goodfellas etc) the second half of the story is slower and not as much fun, as Mesrine suffers the consequences of his actions including estranged family members, more prison and ultimately his death.
The two-part gangster biopic of "Public Enemy number 1" and criminal legend Mesrine can start.And starting with the death isn't just some artistic license from director Jean-François Richet; it allows the viewers to understand why Police didn't take any chances.
It's the story of gangster Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) from 1959 to becoming known as Pubic Enemy #1 in 1972.
It is a true story of one of Europe's most infamous and charismatic criminals, Jacques Mesrine, played brilliantly by Vincent Cassel.
The first film was an excellent gangster flick.After the brutal Algerian War for Independence, Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) is at a lost with what to do as a career.
After becoming notorious in France Mesrine and Jeanne fled to Montreal which saw their criminal activities continue and he becomes a focus for the media.Mesrine: Killer Instinct has a lot going for it, with a good script, a great visual style and excellent acting.
Cassel's acting soars in the solid gangster film "Mesrine: Killer Instinct".
Directed by Jean-François Richet (who directed the recent version of Assault on Precinct 13), this French gangster film follows the outlaw odyssey of Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel), the legendary French gangster of the 1960s and 1970s who came to be known as French Public Enemy No. 1 and The Man of a Thousand Faces.
This first part focuses on Mesrine's rise from the average joe to a big time criminal, his escape to Canada, U.S., and then back.The film starts off near the end of Mesrine's life, right before he gets gunned down by police.
Thankfully, Richet's direction is playful enough that it doesn't make the scenes feel too derivative, repetitive, or too cheesy.Vincent Cassel's performance as Mesrine truly makes this film great and worth seeking out.
By the time part 1 ends, one does hope Part 2 will focus more on the internal workings of Mesrine's mind as well as a closure to the great set up at the beginning of the film.This is a solid gangster film with good action and strong performances.
The films regularly tell the life story of the legendary Jacques Mesrine, an internationally famous criminal responsible for dozens of bank robberies and murders in the '60s and '70s.
Mesrine is possibly showing him at his greatest and it's a role he has got his teeth into.The film is based on the real-life of French gangster Jacques Mesrine (title character).
Mesrine's bank robberies and prison breaks are so spectacular and defiant that he's declared "Public Enemy No. 1" in two countries, Canada and France, officially one of the most famous and dangerous criminals in French history, a figure cops wet themselves over and women want to sleep with.
A realistic, brutal, ruthless crime tale which recalls the story of Jacques Mesrine, the famous gangster, the intended public enemy number one.
This, the first of two films, follows the career of infamous French criminal Jacques Mesrine from the time he leaves the army till shortly after he escapes from prison in Quebec.
Much of the strength of the film is down to Vincent Cassel's excellent portrayal of Mesrine; he might not look like a stereotypical movie gangster but he brought an intensity to the role that made him believable.