The term “public enemy” arose in the 1930s to refer to headline-grabbing gangsters such as Al Capone, John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, and Machine Gun Kelly – all of whom served time, in fictionalized form of course, on the silver screen. So there are powerful true crime and movie associations with the title Public Enemy Number One, the overall English moniker French director Jean-François Richet (Assault on Precinct 13) gives his entertaining, though somewhat scattershot, two-part biopic on French gangster Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel), which careens through 20 years of daring heists, underworld violence, love affairs and jail breaks in the 1960s and 1970s.
Mesrine: Killer Instinct, the first legend-building part, is based on a memoir Mesrine wrote in prison. Richet tracks our anti-hero from his soldier days in Algeria, through early crimes and his rejection of family for his gangster pals (Gérard Depardieu in a menacing performance as his portly godfather-mentor) to his encounter with a fetching prostitute (Cécile de France) with whom he engages in a Bonnie-and-Clyde-esque spree that forces the lovers to flee the country.

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