Hello Manchester!

Director: Jean-Francois Richet
Starring: Vincent Cassel, Cecile De France, Gerard Depardieu, Ludivine Sagnier, Gilles Lellouche, Roy Dupuis, Elena Anaya, Michael Duchaussoy, Myrium Boyer, Florence Thomassin, Abdelhafid Metalsi, Gilbert Sicotte, Deano Clavet, Mathieu Amalric, Gerard Lavin, Samuel Le Bihan, Oliver Gourmet
Cert: 15
Region: B
Length: 113mins/133mins
Video: VC-1, 1080p, 2:35:1
Audio: DTS-HD MA 5.1
Languages: French
Subtitles: English
Number of Discs: 1

The English language gangster movie may be in its death throws (Guy Ritchie's gone up in the world with Sherlock Holmes and even Johnny Depp couldn't make John Dillinger's life seem all all that exciting in Public Enemies), so perhaps its natural that we've turned to the foreign market for a fresh perspective on crime. On the heels of films like Der Baader Meinhof Komplex and Gomorrah, 2009 saw the UK release of an epic crime saga based on the life of notorious French thief Jacques Mesrine (pronounced 'Mey-rine'). The story was chopped into two separate films: Killer Instinct and Public Enemy No. 1.

The Freddie Mercury look was all the rage that year

Mesrine is in essence the French John Dillinger. Both men liked to rob banks, taunt their pursuers by casually wandering into police stations in disguise and they both loved seeing their own name in the press, believing themselves to be Robin Hood-type figures even though they never actually gave anything to the poor and left a bloody trail of dead lawmen in their wake. But whereas Michael Mann's recent biopic was relegated to 1930's America, Mesrine's tale spans nearly twenty years, many different countries - France, Spain, America, England - and he pulled off a total of four (four!) prison breaks. He also had an endless stream of women ready to drop their drawers and turn thieves, all for their beloved Jacques - something probably more to do with the real Mesrine's fat wallet rather than his actual appearance; in Public Enemy No.1 waitress Sylvie takes one look at Vincent Cassel's bald pate and beer gut and seems to instantly fall in love with him. Hmmm.

Still, if the real Mesrine was half as charismatic as Vincent Cassel, you can see the attraction for them. "Nobody chooses when I die but me," he boasts before knocking back another drink. He'll rob one bank, then bound across the street to rob a second one with a huge grin plastered on his face the whole time. In Killer Instinct when the owners of the house that he's robbing on his very first gig after leaving the Army arrive on the scene mid-theft, Mesrine claims he's a police officer and charms his way out...still carrying the money. We never really know why he is the way is (his parents are nice people, he can easily get an honest job) but we do know that he's good at what he does. "It's just the way I am," he tearfully shrugs at his sick father's bedside. Even marrying beautiful Spanish girl Sofia (Elena Anaya) and having children with her won't douse the raging fire inside him, so for most of his life he flits from one woman to the next, i.e. Cecile De France's Jeanne Schneider (essentially the female version of Mesrine) and then, when she's imprisoned and dumps him, Ludivine Sagnier's babydoll waitress Sylvie.

Mesrine is just as shallow with his partners in crime as he is his women. He'll claim they are like brothers to him but when a bank job goes bad and they collapse in a pool of their own blood, he'll barely glance in his rear-view mirror before striking up a new partnership, be it with former Bond villain Mathieu Amalric as Besse, an inmate who shares Mesrine's talent for masterminding prison breaks, or Gerard Lanvin as revolutionary Charly Bauer. With each prison escape Mesrine grows more arrogant (in one scene he boasts in court that he can bribe any prison guard before literally waving the keys to his cuffs in the judge's face) but things really start to go badly for him when he starts believing his own press, hooking up with Lanvin to naively start a revolution that will obviously never happen - especially as the French police, tired of Mesrine's kidnap plots, bank heists and murders, start to plan their own little execution to get rid of him for good...