Mesrine - Parts 1&2: a review

Mesrine is a 2-part film telling, over 4 stylish French hours, the story of real-life French gangster Jacques Mesrine. Mesrine's criminal career through the 1960's and 70's made him somewhat of a celebrity criminal of that kind that seems to have been consigned to history.

Here, he's played memorably by Vincent Cassel, present for pretty much the entire film and holding the screen superbly. Frankly he holds the whole thing together, because it's a bit of a rickety structure this one. The problem is that the film doesn't really make any concerted effort to get under Mesrine's skin, to uncover any depth to his character. There could've been more made of a possibly difficult relationship with his father, and surely he would have been affected in some way by what he saw and did serving for the French army in Algeria – shown in opening scenes that some of the most harrowing and difficult in the whole film. But there's nothing by way of more substantial explanation of Mesrine or his actions.

The truth may well be that there is no greater explanation. There doesn't seem to have been any political ideology influencing Mesrine – he does wind up involved with a couple of political groups but more out of convenience than anything. There is a formative notion of a campaign against the prison system in France, but crucially this seems to be driven more by Mesrine's feeling that it wronged him personally, rather than because it was wrong generally, and there is the key. Mesrine comes across as being driven entirely by ego and vanity, loving his celebrity status. The only times he does anything for reasons other than money, it's because he has been personally wronged, either by the prisons or, in an unsavoury incident that seems to represent a tipping point in his relationship with the public and police, by a journalist who attacks him in an article.

You get the feeling that director Jean-Francois Richet and writer Abdel Raouf Dafri probably realised from the start that there wasn't really much to tell on that score, and so made a conscious decision not to go down that route at all. The problem is that what we are left with, then, is the story of Mesrine's actions. These basically fall into the categories of robbing banks, kidnapping millionaires, shoot-outs with cops, getting arrested, breaking out of prison and seducing women. Repeat ad infinitum. None of these elements are a problem, it's just that 4 hours of them ends up feeling a bit repetitive. The film, being basically a series of vignettes about his various antics, is annoyingly episodic and secondary characters – various accomplices and women – appear and disappear without introduction or explanation

The other big problem I had with this is that I'm left unsure about what we're supposed to make of Mesrine. Cassel satisfyingly avoids the cliché of the charming psycho who is all friendly smiles one minute and ice cold rages the next, and carries a winning insouciance into most scenes, talking his way into this and out of that and happily playing shamelessly to the gallery. But shorn of the danger that he could have got from a more stock psycho character, what are we left with? If we're not meant to fear him in that way, are we meant to see him as a lovable anti-hero? I assume that might be what was being aimed for, but it's missed - through no fault of Cassel's, mind, but because the character is left so annoyingly out of reach.

Cassel, indeed, is excellent and needs to be. He carries the character from callow youth in the French army to balding, wig-wearing, plump middle-age, with his magnificent nose (worthy of a separate billing) and electric stare ever-present. Matching him in the stare department comes support from Mathieu Amalric in the second part, though he doesn't get to do much except that thing with his eyes, and Gerard Depardieu is deliciously unexpected as a Godfather-type figure in the first part. The rest of the cast, yeah they're all grand but honestly there's such a revolving door of characters that it's hard for any of them to make an impression.

I'm being pretty hard on the film here, but the thing is it is still very good, and I want to be hard on it because it could have been great. Aside from Cassel's central performance, it looks wonderfully stylish – a French film set in the 60's and 70's, how could it not? - and the action scenes are well-filmed and exciting even if they do end up getting repetitive due to the number of them that happen in similar circumstances. There's only so much you can do with cops and robbers shooting at each other and chasing each other in cars, and though there's nothing here to match, say, Heat, it's very competently done and suitably visceral. There's some subtly clever camera tricky now and again, with a split screen here and a camera spinning 360 degrees on an axis there, and it never feels obtrusive or flashy.

I have a feeling I want to like this more than I actually do, and more than it merits. It's bitty, episodic, too vaguely structured and characterised, lacking in real substance.....it probably glamourises the life and actions of a man who shouldn't be glamourised.....I don't know. It's been likened to films like Scarface, but that ended up working as a commentary on the American Dream and on the 80's, this just doesn't function on any other level than the surface of the story.

Watch it for Cassel. Watch it for an entertaining crime drama with little of the stylised excesses of it's American forebears, and try to ignore it's real life origins. Watch it in two parts.   

On Iran, or: Things to Ask Your Leaders When You're Dead

The word this week is that some of Obama's administration think military action against Iran is pretty much inevitable.  If America gets involved, it's a safe bet the UK would too - we being very much the Nick Clegg in this coalition.  So we are facing the real possibility of being involved in a war in the Middle East.  Again!  What was that definition of insanity...?

Subtler arguments seem to get lost with these issues, so let's stick with the obvious:  if we get into a war, people will die. 

Iranians will die.  Soldiers, some.  C'est la guerre.  Civilians.  Women and children.  Perhaps we'll see brief clips on the news, lifeless forms in alien dress, emotionally removed from the reality of their humanity.  We're pretty desensitised to such sights these days.  Will we care?

Americans will die.  We'll get plenty of exposure to the stars and stripes, weeping family members, military mugshots and spreadsheet figures.  Their brand of chest-beating patriotism seems a bit daft to us and numbers are numbers.  Will we care?

Brits will die.  We'll see Union Jack-covered coffins carried off a plane and somberly paraded through a small market town to the strains of Elgar's Nimrod, news pieces about the deceased and how they loved this or that which will get briefer and briefer as the numbers get higher and higher.  Now will we care?

That won't be a good moment to ask why.  Respect for the bereaved will rightly hold off the difficult question.  So we should ask now:  what will they all die for?

There are various lines on this.  The main thrust is that Iran gaining nuclear weapons would destabilise the region to a dangerous extent.  William Hague has said it would cause an arms race and Cold War scenario.  The most obvious argument against us saying another country cannot have nukes is that, well, we have nukes.  America has nukes.  Aren't we being hypocrites?  This is a naive argument but pretty tough to touch from a purely logical standpoint.  The counter would be, though, that the real pertinent point is the presence of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, hence Hague's Cold War comment.  The argument is that this would cause a destabilisation of the balance of power in the region, with potentially chaotic and dangerous consequences. 

The elephant glowing faintly in the corner is the fact that nuclear weapons are there already.  Israel's nuclear program is the worst-kept secret going, thanks to a whistle-blower exposing it to the world.  That scenario already exists, Mr Hague.  You're too late.

What it would actually cause is a shift in the balance of power, and if anything a more balanced region would result.  At the moment, Israel, perennially backed by a member of the UN security council, is pretty much untouchable.  Countless attempts to address Israel's frequently illegal actions have run up against the brick wall of America's veto.  Which makes America's outraged reaction to Russia vetoing the UN Syria resolution seem kind of......hypocritical?  All those dead Syrians make the irony hard to savour. 

Then there are Saudi Arabia and the Sunni states.  The power struggle between Sunnis and Shias is going pretty badly for the Shias at the moment, with Iraq a mess and Syria on the brink of, if not already well into, civil war.  The Arab Spring has been ridden out rather more smoothly by Saudi Arabia and co.  Purely coincidentally, these countries have tended to be rather more friendly and co-operative with The West than the Shia countries.  There's been a startling lack of attempted UN resolutions against these countries in their own repression of democracy and equality. 

With Western allies all round, and the increasing influence of Turkey to boot, one might think it's getting a bit one-sided in there.  If Iran were to gain a nuclear deterrent, as we like to call it when we have it, the balance might be redressed a bit.  No wonder this is A Bad Thing.

The other great line against Iran is that hey, they're crazy yo!  Can't let them have nukes!  Hmm.  Wars started by Iran since the revolution?  Zero.  Wars Iran involved in since the revolution?  One.  When Iraq invaded Iran.  Egged on by guess who? 

They want to wipe Israel off the map!  Hmm.  Yes, because politicians ALWAYS say what they mean and mean what they say, and never ever ever ever ever say things to play well with an audience.  Wars started by Iran?  Wars started by Israel?  Hell, one might even think that Iran is quite an insular nation that would like to be left alone.  Rather than having puppet rulers foisted on it by foreign powers, for example. 

It's a repressive, undemocratic regime that treats women abhorrently and cracks down brutally on dissent and difference!  Granted.  When do we bomb Saudi Arabia then?

In other words.....to cut a long story short, the current balance of power in the region suits the West just fine.  Western allies and West-friendly states are free to do like, whatever, man, and we get to pretend we have an ethical foreign policy when the rest step out of line.  No-one cares about Libya?  Right!  POW!  God, aren't we great?  We all look like George Clooney and our teeth sparkle.

Iran getting nukes might upset this cosy state of affairs so of course the West wants to stop that happening.  But that is not cool these days, such blatant self-interest.  We need a reason, and it damn well better be a good one.  No mystery WMD's or 45-minute warnings this time.  We need a proper good, old-fashioned casus belli.  A moral narrative.  So we're told Iran is this or that; them getting nukes would do this or that, a rebalance of power is called a destabilisation.  Politics is called lunacy - by politicians!

In answer to that question, what will they all die for?  Well....turns out it's the same thing that they've been dying for for centuries, on battlefields all across Europe, India, the Americas, Africa, The Middle East.  It''s hard to find a corner of the planet that some poor Tommy HASN'T died in for a cause constructed by leaders we trust to decide what's in our self-interest.