Mesrine: Public Enemy #1

Mesrine: Public Enemy #1 (L'ennemi public n°1, 2008) is Jean-François Richet's crime drama, ready to watch online on iFILM. This is the second half of the two-part saga about Jacques Mesrine — a robber, kidnapper and escape artist who turned his own nerve into a media spectacle across 1970s France and Canada.

Vincent Cassel plays Mesrine at the height of his fame and his paranoia. Bank jobs, prison breaks, interviews given while on the run with a gun within reach — he revels in the role of folk avenger and starts believing his own myth. Ludivine Sagnier, Mathieu Amalric and Gérard Lanvin orbit him, but the film stays fixed on one increasingly cornered man. The police tighten the net, and you know from the opening how that Paris intersection will end.

Richet isn't excusing the gangster; he's dissecting how a hunger for attention eats a man faster than any bullet. Cassel packs three roles into one performance — charm, cruelty and dread at once. Built for anyone who likes dense European crime films that refuse to romanticize their subject. Stream Mesrine: Public Enemy #1 (2008) online on iFILM.