Mesrine: Killer Instinct

L'instinct de mort

Canada, Italy, France

2008

113 Min

Color

2.35:1

Arabic, English, Spanish, French

Currently 3.5/5 Stars.
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SCR Abdel Raouf Dafri, Jean-François Richet, Jacques Mesrine

CAST Vincent Cassel, Cécile De France, Gérard Depardieu, Gilles Lellouche, Roy Dupuis, Elena Anaya, Ludivine Sagnier, Michel Duchaussoy, Myriam Boyer, Florence Thomassin, Abdelhafid Metalsi, Gilbert Sicotte, Deano Clavet, Frankie Pain

MUSIC Eloi Painchaud

Toronto (Gala), San Francisco (World Cinema), Edinburgh (Gala)

Synopsis

nspired by Jacques Mesrine’s autobiographical book L’instinct de mort – which he wrote in prison shortly before his magnificent final escape – Jean-François Richet’s fast-paced drama charts Mesrine’s rise from a wayward French soldier in Algeria to a bolder and bolder criminal on the streets of Paris. Mesrine’s outlaw odyssey even brought him to Canada, where he fell in with separatist radicals in Quebec. Thirty years after French police gunned him down in a spectacular shootout, his infamy lives on. Equal parts thriller and biopic, Mesrine remains faithful to its central character, a dynamic figure who is by no means a model protagonist. –cineuropa

Director

Jean-François Richet

Jean-Francois Richet is a French screenwriter, director, and producer, born on July 2, 1966 in Paris. He grew up in Meaux, a suburb east of Paris.

Selected filmography

État des lieux (1995) – named at the César Awards 1996 in the Best Debut category.
Ma 6-T va crack-er (1997) – a film which caricatures(?) gang warfare.
Assault on Precinct 13 (2005) – an action/thriller starring Ethan Hawke, Laurence Fishburne, John Leguizamo, Maria Bello, Ja Rule, and Drea de Matteo. It is a loose remake of John Carpenter’s 1976 film of the same name, with an updated plot.
Mesrine (2008) – featuring Vincent Cassel as Jacques Mesrine, co-starring Gérard Depardieu, Mathieu Amalric and Cécile de France. The movie (an adaptation of L’Instinct de mort) is being released in two parts, the first L’instinct de mort (English title: Killer Instinct) was released in France on October 22, 2008 and the second part L’Ennemi public n°1 (English title: Public Enemy No. 1) was released in French… read more

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Classroom Battles

25Aug12

The most uninteresting gangster character ever. Like, completely unidimensional. But the film is not bad, and it works okay.

film_lies101

24Aug12

The film is fun once you you get past the split screen montage bullshit, I seriously almost turned it off.

G.W. Johansson

23Dec11

Vincent Cassel is my favorite right now.

Justin Oakey

18Oct11

This film is nearly as mesmerizing, complex, charismatic, yet utterly brutal and uncompromising, as its titular character, Jacques Mesrine. Cassel plays the part beautifully, and the rest of the film tries to keep up. Gorgeous camera work follow great fast-paced scenes and knuckle-whitening action. Overall, a wonderful introduction and ultimately a perfect set up for the next film.

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