Average Rating: 7.2/10
Reviews Counted: 81
Fresh: 67 | Rotten: 14
Vincent Cassel is mesmerizing in the lead role. Even if it's less focused than its predecessor, it's more fun.
Average Rating: 6.9/10
Critic Reviews: 14
Fresh: 11 | Rotten: 3
Vincent Cassel is mesmerizing in the lead role. Even if it's less focused than its predecessor, it's more fun.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.7/5
User Ratings: 13,212
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
R, 1 hr. 53 min.
Drama, Action & Adventure, Art House & International, Mystery & Suspense
Sep 3, 2010 Limited
Mar 29, 2011
Music Box Films
All Critics (81) | Top Critics (14) | Fresh (67) | Rotten (15) | DVD (1)
Yes, he was a bad guy; but what a great story.
This film is about the gangster at his peak, his final daring prison escapes and the source of his notoriety.
You needn't have seen the first chapter to be swept up in this swirl of bloodletting and braggadocio.
Director Jean-Francois Richet and screenwriter Abdel Raouf Dafri's movie generates much heat, but little light.
Jacques Mesrine's end may be inevitable, but he certainly doesn't bore us along the way.
[It] doesn't dig deeply into why Mesrine was the way he was. It's propelled by such a forceful performance from Cassel that, in the end, it hardly matters.
Mesrine is a pretend epic just enjoyable enough to make you wish that Cassel would get a real one.
Cassel tackles his role like it's the ultimate one-man show, filling his mustachioed character with a feral swagger that conveys tightly coiled threat and sexual charisma. It's not a particularly insightful performance, but it certainly feels authentic...
...both movies would have been better served had they been edited down into one consistently engrossing thriller.
... crackles with tension and violence, driven by [Vincent] Cassel's powerhouse performance.
Director Jean-Francois Richet obviously has been influenced by the Arthur Penn/Beatty film Bonnie & Clyde (1967). His film has some of the tone, personality, and energy of the American crime classic.
This masterpiece combines the best of 'Scarface,' 'The Godfather' and 'Bonnie and Clyde'. Vincent Cassel tackles the demanding lead role and is simply magnificent. There is no shortage of action, violence and ...
His violent, pathetic end makes you sad not for the man but for a world in which such a creature could exist -- and thrive.
Richet is overly ambitious and often pushes too hard, but in that sense he's perfect for chronicling Mesrine's life.
... there's also a lot of fun to be had spotting the many references to other gangster flicks that Richet has planted throughout his film.
The last half of the four-hour Mesrine is much better than the first half, but will anyone who sat through the first two tedious hours care?
The second half of the French gangster series drags a bit at the end but is fun, macho stuff nonetheless.
Women cannot resist Cassel, even though he looks like he needs a bath. His sneer should win prizes. What a punim.
[Mesrine's] demise is foretold at the beginning of both films so the ending is no surprise. Getting there, though is full of surprises...
The final scene, and all that comes before it, deservedly establishes Cassel as an international movie star and Richet as a stylish auteur-in-the-making.
According to this lofty mandate, the film shouldn't be judged as a historically meretricious account.
The main and most enjoyable difference between the second installment and the first is the greater opportunity the latter provides Cassel to sketch some dimension into the coded mythologizing of his character.
The saga of French mobster Jacques Mesrine isn't compelling enough to warrant a second film.
Much like Che, the second portion of the Mesrine saga, while good, isn't as strong or as focused as the first portion. Still though, it's a lot of fun, and very watchable. The first is fun too, but the fun seems more evident here, mostly with the scenes of shopping, and of course the many scenes of armed robbery,
September 13, 2011Super Reviewer
Sadly, this doesn't have a storytelling ability that the first part did. It doesn't have the source material to capture the same experience that the first part had; which was based on Jacques Mesrine's own writing. This has a really interesting opening part, but then goes nowhere after he's captured and finishes his
September 1, 2011Super Reviewer
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