New Orleans Film Society

Synopsis

This two-fisted, two-part epic charts the remarkable 20-year crime spree of Jacques Mesrine, France’s public enemy number one. With Vincent Cassel’s magnetic performance as its anchor, Jean-François Richet’s star-studded film rockets through Mesrine’s life with abandon—it’s biopic meets white-knuckle thriller. Each of the two parts is an autonomous, fully realized film; they are equally impressive experienced in order or reversed, as a set or as a singular cinematic experience.

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. After such a monumental rise, comes the inevitable fall as the police close in, bringing the life of Jacques Mesrine to full bloody circle.

In French with English subtitles.