**** – One of the fatal flaws that usually accompany criminal biopics that are based largely on autobiographies is the attempt at portraying the subject in a light that is far too innocent and heroic. Luckily for the first part of this two-part 2008 French film about burglar and murderer Jacques Mesrine, there is little or no intention here to make more out of this guy than what he actually was. And what he actually was was an awful father, terrible husband and even worse human being whose psychopathic tendencies led him to wantonly murder and commit a large number of robberies. So if you remove any sort of bias from the film maker’s viewpoint in a movie with this kind of subject you end up with an entertaining and stylish action film with interesting, realistic characters and a gripping narrative. For those unaware, Jacques Mesrine was a Frenchman who after returning home from duty in the Algerian War of the late 1950s embarked on a life of crime that took him from his home country to Spain, Canada, the USA and even Venezuela. This first half of the film concentrates on his life from his soldier days up to around the early 1970s, when he made probably the most famous of his many prison escapes from a maximum security penitentiary in the deep forest of Quebec. I can’t say that this movie is perfect, as it does seem to skip over some stuff and has a fair amount of dullness in the first half hour or so, but I can’t imagine anyone who enjoys modern day crime drama or gangster-type flicks not also enjoying this.
No comments:
Post a Comment