Nobody kills me until I say so

Mesrine: Part 1: Killer Instinct and Part 2: Public Enemy #1

Crit

How do I love this? Let me count the genres. Let's see, there's the innocent-young-soldier-who-sees-too-much-in-the-war-and-comes-out-wrecked-for-a-9-to-5-gig genre, there's the James Cagney-purposefully-crazy-gangster genre, there's the Gun Crazy/Bonnie and Clyde/crime-as-aphrodisiac genre, there's the you-endanger-my-family-while-coming-after-me? (cf. The Godfather: Part II) subgenre, there's the John Ford's-own-Monument Valley-Western genre, there's the prison-break genre (not to mention the broken-in-prison genre; geez, those Canadians maybe aren't as jolly and amiable as we've been led to believe!), there's the how-the-hell-is-the-superhero-getting-out-of-this-alive? genre--and that's all just in Part 1.

Vincent Cassel is appropriately steely/charming/scary as France's celebrity criminal Jacques Mesrine, a relentless shark who knows that he needs to keep moving forward or die.