Mesrine: Public Enemy #1

Now back in France, Mesrine is finally in police custody and facing justice for his crimes. After escaping a courtroom and kidnapping the judge at gunpoint, Mesrine is declared Public Enemy Number 1 and is eventually condemned to a maximum-security prison where he writes his memoirs, establishing himself as a household name and the anti-hero across France. Mesrine stages another daring escape and disappears into the lawless underworld, taunting the police and reinventing himself as a celebrity criminal through his savvy manipulation of the media.

“Vincent Cassel, the cocky, snake-eyed French actor with a prizefighter’s mug is so charismatic in “Mesrine,” a four-hour biography of the notorious French gangster Jacques Mesrine, that you can’t take your eyes off him. Mr. Cassel’s monumental performance fuses the cobralike menace of the young Robert Mitchum with the whipsaw, shape-shifting (from wiry to bulbous) volatility of classic Robert De Niro, and lightens it with a cat burglar’s grace and agility.” (Stephen Holden, New York Times)