Your Company
 

Mesrine: Public Enemy #1(L'ennemi public n°1)

✭ ✭ ✭ ✭   Read critic reviews

France, Canada · 2008
Rated R · 2h 13m
Director Jean-François Richet
Starring Vincent Cassel, Ludivine Sagnier, Mathieu Amalric, Gérard Lanvin
Genre Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller

Brazen bank robberies and perplexing prison escapes are just two of many entries on the criminal record of Jacques Mesrine, France's Public Enemy No. 1 in the 1970s. After years of successfully evading the law, Jacques must finally face the music, but he won't go down easy.

Stream Mesrine: Public Enemy #1

What are people saying?

What are critics saying?

75

ReelViews by James Berardinelli

Although Killer Instinct is the better of the two parts, Public Enemy No. 1 is a worthy continuation, providing closure to a tale that was interrupted just as things were getting really interesting.

60

Time Out by Joshua Rothkopf

Simply skip the first part entirely: "Killer Instinct" bulges with a disconnected jumble of nightclub attacks and fence-clipping escapes you've seen better elsewhere. Yet a tide change happens with the superior Public Enemy No. 1, which takes the subject's raging ego as its cue.

100

San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle

The films never lose sight of Mesrine the man, a fascinating character in that he's brutal yet extremely intelligent, has a skewed but discernible conscience, and, under the right circumstances, can be warm and generous.

50

Village Voice by Nicolas Rapold

Mesrine's promised end in November 1979 arrives as history recorded it, but, by that time, you're hoping the next vogue in biopics is the short film.

88

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

In most movies, we know the police bullets will never find their target. With Mesrine, (1) sometimes they do, and (2) in real life, he survived an incredible 20 years with the police firing at him at least annually.

83

The A.V. Club by Tasha Robinson

Public Enemy openly raises the question of why officers of the law hated Mesrine so much that they were willing to turn his death into a block party.

Users who liked this film also liked