Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		4.5

Mesrine: Killer Instinct Blu-ray Movie Review

Out or dead.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 8, 2011

The French are often called a nation of lovers, not fighters, and France’s seeming genetic propensity to surrender in wartime is something of an iconic joke. (How many people does it take to defend Paris? No one knows.) And so isn’t it rather odd that France has become the leading European purveyor of the gangster film, that tough as nails genre where antihero bad guys dispatch their nemeses with barely the blink of an eye, all the while storming their way through torrid romances without a—well—Gallic sense of propriety and the proper way to treat a woman. If France came into its own filmic crime wave in the 1950’s courtesy of expatriate Jules Dassin (Rififi), and the epochal releases of France’s nascent New Wave boys, Jean-Luc Godard (À bout de soufflé [Breathless]) and Francois Truffaut (Tirez sur le pianiste [Shoot the Piano Player]), there are a plethora of great French gangster films that make that country seem like a refuge for every petty criminal and indeed major bad guy to come down the pike. One of the latest entries in this French crime spree is the fascinating two-part film Mesrine, based (albeit sometimes rather loosely, as the film’s textual prelude avers) on the real life exploits of a French criminal mastermind who due to his propensity for expert disguises, stole (what would you expect?) Lon Chaney’s soubriquet and became known as “the man of a thousand faces.” Highlighted by a viscerally glowering, incredibly intense performance by Vincent Cassel, an actor who manages to purvey his feral, rat faced demeanor into one propulsive performance after another, the first part of Mesrine, subtitled Killer Instinct, is a frightening roller coaster ride where the viewer is on a decidedly vicious thrill ride with an obvious sociopath.

It’s not often that a film portrait of an infamous gangster is thought of as a travelogue, but Mesrine: Killer Instinct “gets around,” as they say. After a brief and disturbing prologue that recalls two iconic late 1960’s American films, Bonnie and Clyde and the original The Thomas Crown Affair, we travel back to 1959 Algeria, and then take a more or less chronological trip through the next several decades of Mesrine’s life, a life that takes us back to France, and then at various times to Montreal, Arizona and, finally, a Canadian forest. Director Jean-François Richet, who passingly mimicks Norman Jewison's split screen technique from Thomas Crown, travels huge swaths of material, both biographical and geographical, in this compelling first part of the Mesrine saga. Despite a putatively unsympathetic lead character, this is a film that virtually dares its audience not to be hypnotized by the brutality not just of Mesrine himself but the host of people with whom he associates and, later, even by the ostensible “good guys,” the Canadian forces which catch him and put him in a high security prison, where’s he’s hideously tortured and punished.

Though we get a frightening and visceral look at this self-confessed killer and robber, we never really get a decent accounting for what made Mesrine the criminal he became. In fact in the 1959 Algerian flashback which briefly interrupts the film’s narrative flow, Mesrine is actually shown to be at least a relatively decent, if troubled, individual. What caused his sociopathic tendencies and led to his infamous life of crime? Richet never fully answers that question, and that is either going to bother some viewers or actually make them grateful that some psychobabble postulating has been avoided.

What is impeccably handled in this film is a sense of pace and especially the incredibly bravura performance of Cassel as Mesrine. This is a vicious, desperate character who is just as likely to shoot as he is to breathe, and Cassel brings that animalistic quality completely and utterly to life. Almost unrecognizable here is Gerard Depardieu as Mesrine’s mentor, Guido, a man who, as odd as it seems, takes Mesrine under his somewhat fatherly wing and teaches him the tricks of the criminal trade.

Mesrine, despite being something akin to a carnival thrill ride, is often not an easy film to watch. Women are brutalized, men are killed mercilessly, sometimes with nary the blink of an eye, and Richet stages it all dispassionately, almost eschewing any sensationalistic element if only to make the point that this was Mesrine’s standard operating procedure, for better or worse. Perhaps the most disturbing sequence of the film, as ironic as it may be, come during Richet’s incarceration at a Canadian maximum security prison, where he’s sequestered and given a taste of his own brutal medicine, so to speak. Richet has impeccable technique in this segment, helping to elucidate Mesrine’s desperation and descent into almost a primal level of fear and degradation.

The one criticism which may befall this film, rightly or wrongly, is its anecdotal narrative structure. We simply go from event to event, which often amounts to crime to crime or in fact killing to killing, with little or no attention paid to motive or the interior world of the characters. This may in fact be Richet’s own commentary on the lack of conscience of Mesrine and his cohorts. Instead of a ruminative character, someone like the Pacino or De Niro characters in The Godfather, we’re up against someone who is truly only surface deep, existing in the moment and extracting what little pleasure he feels by simply staying alive.

Mesrine: Killer Instinct ends its first half with the repetition of the mantra that Mesrine and one of his closest buddies have adopted as they successfully sought to break out of the maximum security prison: “Out or dead.” That bifurcated rode has led at least for a while to life on the outside, but it’s come at a huge cost of ruined lives and a trail of hideous murders. As the first half of the film ends, some audience members may be thinking that Mesrine may think he’s escaped, but in truth he’s entangled himself deeper than he probably ever imagined possible.

Mesrine: Killer Instinct Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Mesrine: Killer Instinct has finally arrived in a U.S. release from Music Box with an AVC encoded 1080p image in 2.34:1. My colleague Svet Atanasov has been less than impressed with some of the foreign releases Mesrine has been granted on Blu-ray thus far. I haven't seen those Blu-rays, but this new release features a startlingly crisp and colorful image that offers excellent fine detail and gorgeous saturation. Richet casts this film in a lot of greens and blues, and those colors bristle with life and vibrancy throughout this presentation. The Algerian sequence is processed and filtered and therefore has an abundantly grainy, overblown contrast look which is completely intentional. The rest of the film looks brilliantly sharp and well defined, and the only artifact of any import was a moment of shimmer and aliasing on the side of building during a tracking shot.

Mesrine: Killer Instinct Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Mesrine: Killer Instinct is granted two very fine lossless tracks, one in English and one in the original French, delivered courtesy of a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix. I opted for the original French language track, though I spot-checked large segments of the film with the English track. The English dub is actually surprisingly well handled and it's one of the few times I can say with very little reservation that if you don't like reading subtitles, you'll probably be very pleasantly surprised by the English track. One really interesting thing which is quite noticeable is that the foley effects are mixed much higher in the English track than in the French. Listen to the dinner scene with Mesrine and his parents shortly after his return from Algeria for a good example. The clicking and clanging of the silverware is noticeably louder on the English track. All of this said, the French track is one incredibly robust piece of sonic design, completely evident from the first blistering bass notes that underscore the opening split-screen sequence. In fact the low end of this track is incredibly impressive. There's really good use of the rear and side channels throughout this track, including several bombastic shootout scenes where bullets zing in multiple directions simultaneously. Dialogue and effects are very well mixed and fidelity is excellent throughout both of these well modulated tracks.

Mesrine: Killer Instinct Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Unfortunately this new Music Box release does not include much in the way of supplements, and certainly nothing like some of the previous European releases. In fact the only supplement other than previews of other Music Box titles is the Trailer.

Mesrine: Killer Instinct Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Mesrine: Killer Instinct grabs the viewer by the throat and doesn't let go for the next two hours. There's little moralizing, next to no motive explorations, simply a surface deep look at a killer and criminal who may have in fact been an empty shell to begin with. This is brutal and forceful filmmaking that may not appeal to the easily upset or disturbed, but it features one of the most commanding lead performances in recent memory. Highly recommended.