Mesrine: Killer Instinct

Nebulon has a hard time with the concept of your Earth countries. On his home world the various factions are united under the rule of Karg the Merciless and peace reigns; you're peaceful or they kill you. As such Nebulon has a hard time understanding the idea of the French and their salty indifference as well as the general disdain the rest of the world seems to hold them in. Never the less, he will brave the subtitles in order to escape the deafening racket of Lt Gork who has recently begun to learn how to play what you humans call the electric guitar.

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So what does Mesrine have to offer aside from Gallic panache? Well plenty, from the sinister opening sequence filmed in split screen, to the brash prison break this is a great film, and a great biopic, or should I say part biopic, as Mesrine pt II aka Public Enemy is in the works.

So who is Jacques Mesrine? Well he's a psychopath, a criminal, a self publicist and a thoroughly unsympathetic character. Although the movies does try and draw on the nicer side of this guy in parts, this is definitely one of those where the audience is left with little moral guidance. If you're like Nebulon and you root for the bad guys then this movie is probably for you as, in Mesrine's world, everyone is a bad guy.

On the downside, this movie could be accused of cramming too much into a film and in a sense the plot suffers for it because the script is constantly skipping over the most interesting parts. It would have been nice to see for instance more detail on Mesrine's time in Algeria or have concentrated more on the Prison break. What gets little more than a passing mention here could well be the entire basis of other movies. However, short of turning this into a miniseries or some kind of LOTR style crime epic (which it almost is anyway), there is little that can be done to rectify this. As long as you buy the premise of a life in totality there is little here to disappoint.

Nebulon had a spanking good time in this movie, even though he has to cram all his tentacles into an uncomfortable art house seat to do it. Roll on part two, definitely worth beaming down for. In the mean time though Nebulon is retuning to his Maverick cop marathon, and Lt Gork's attempts at something called Smoke on the Water.

Long live Karg the Merciless.