32 Bank hiests, 4 Top seciruty jails, 4 prison breaks … this film already was out in France last summer and people have called it “the French Scarface” and an “an instant gangser classic”. This is a rad looking film about real-life French criminal Jacques Mesrine (1936–1979) who was also briefly active in the United States and Québec. He committed numerous burglaries, jewelery shop and bank robberies, kidnappings, and also took part in arms smuggling. He killed many people, and boasted to having committed approximately 39 murders in total. He was adept at disguising himself, earning himself the moniker “The Man of a Hundred Faces”.

MESRINE:  KILLER INSTINCT (Part 1) – Los Angeles/New York Release Date: August 27, 2010 at The Landmark, West LA; Laemmle’s Playhouse 7, Pasadena; Edwards Westpark 8, Irvine.

MESRINE:  PUBLIC ENEMY No. 1 (Part 2) opens on Friday, September 3.

Synopsis:

Across Canada, the United States and Spain, through France and Algeria, MESRINE: KILLER INSTINCT tells the story of the incredible rise of one of history’s greatest gangsters. Always on the run, a renegade existence only a bullet can stop. MESRINE: KILLER INSTINCT – the first of two parts – charts the outlaw odyssey of Jacques Mesrine, the legendary French gangster of the 1960s and 1970s who came to be known as French Public Enemy No. 1 and The Man of a Thousand Faces. Infamous for his bravado and outrageously daring prison escapes, Mesrine carried out numerous robberies, kidnappings and murders in a criminal career that spanned continents until he was shot dead in 1979 by France’s notorious anti-gang unit. Thirty years after his death, his infamy lives on. Mesrine was helped along the way by beautiful and equally reckless Jeanne Schneider, a Bonnie to match his Clyde. Mesrine made up his own epic, between romanticism and cruelty, flamboyance and tragedy. Both a thriller and a biopic, Mesrine: Killer Instinct explores the man behind the icon.

Awards:
-César Awards 2008 (Won – Best Actor, Best Director and Best Sound)
-Tokyo International Film Festival 2008 (Won – Best Actor)
-Lumiere Awards 2009 (Won – Best Actor)
-Etoiles d’Or 2009 (Won – Best Actor)

Distributor: Music Box Films
Genre: Drama
Rating: R for strong brutal violence, some sexual content and language
Running Time: 113 minutes
Language: French language with English subtitles
Writers: Abdel Raouf Dafri, Jean-François Richet
Director: Jean-François Richet
Producer : Thomas Langmann
Cast: Vincent Cassel, Gérard Depardieu, Cécile de France, Roy Dupuis, Gilles Lellouche, Elena Anaya, Ludivine Sagnier