Quick: What do you think of when you hear "crime film?" Most of you probably thought of the '70s-directors like Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, and Martin Scorsese. Some of you probably thought of Los Angeles in the '30s and '40s; noir capers filled with lush, stylized dialogue. But I'm guessing that a lucky few of you thought of De Gaulle's France of the '50s and '60s, because it was in that place and time that some of the best crime films in history were made. Movies like Rififi, The Samurai and Breathless exemplified a genre at its pinnacle. It's retreated into the shadows in recent years, but every once in a while, a film is released that reminds audiences just how great the genre can be. Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1 is that film.Before anything, it must be said that Public Enemy No. 1 is actually a sequel to Mesrine: Killer Instinct, released in France alongside Public Enemy, as a two-part movie, though Public Enemy works fine as a standalone film. Both covered the life of the real French criminal Jacques Mesrine (expertly played by French actor Vincent Cassel), a bank robber who became famous in France in the '70s, courting the media and making fools of the police through a series of prison escapes. This ended with his death in 1979, when the French police gunned him down as he drove through Paris. Killer Instinct is based off of Mesrine's autobiography of the same name, which he wrote while in prison. The first film works like an abridged version of Mesrine's life, covering his early days as an army interrogator in Algeria, his budding criminal career, his failed marriage, his attempts to go straight and finally his flight to Quebec where his arrest and daring escape put him on the path to fame. Public Enemy follows Mesrine through the '70s, from his return to France to his death at the end of the decade. Aside from the title character, the two movies have very little in common. The only carryover that has any real bearing to the plot is Mesrine's family, and they're only onscreen for a few minutes. All you really need to know is that his wife left him after he returned to crime, and Mesrine left his children with his parents when he went into hiding in Quebec. That's it. Director Jean Francois Richet drives the point home that this is all about Mesrine, something Mesrine himself also wanted people to know. This gives Cassel the heavy burden of carrying nearly the entire movie by himself, a responsibility that he performs marvelously. He plays a Mesrine driven by impulse and a lust for publicity, a showman as much as a thug. He makes daring prison escapes that enthrall the nation and styles himself as a revolutionary and an "honorable bandit," something he himself comes to believe as he falls in with the left-wing militias. Still, Mesrine's posturing doesn't hide the fact that he's a thief at heart, a fact that he'd much rather ignore.-

Unlike its subject, Public Enemy has no outward pretense; it doesn't carry any philosophical message. It's the director's take on what happened, a chronicle of Mesrine's rise and fall. The lack of depth doesn't make it a bad movie by any stretch of the imagination, but those looking for a heady meditation on what led Mesrine to crime will be disappointed. But if you're looking for a tense, fast-paced crime thriller and can stomach a good amount of violence, you'll come away satisfied.