Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1

Director Jean-François Richet (Assault on Precinct 13) and star Vincent Cassel (Black Swan) crank the tension, density, action and violence up a notch from part one in this smoldering biopic of Jacques Mesrine. As France’s most notorious and prolific hoodlum continues to revel in flamboyant criminal activities (he hits two neighboring banks during one single heist) and a meteoric celebrity status in the 1970s, the Paris police finally establish a special unit to end Mesrine’s cascading felonies, mythology, escapes and public nose-thumbing of authority, civility, and morality. Mesrine is self-admittedly not much of a son or father, nor is he the revolutionary or folk hero he attempts to embrace, but he is certainly exceptional fodder for one heck of a mobster epic.