Saturday Night Movies: The Gaulfather
In November 1979, a truck full of police sharpshooters ambushed and killed France’s “Public Enemy #1” as he drove down a busy Parisian boulevard with his girlfriend (who was wounded, but survived). Although this violent dispatch was, in essence, a public execution without trial, very few people grieved for the demise of murderer, bank robber, kidnapper, and serial prison escapee Jacques Mesrine. Over the course of his 20 year “career”, Mesrine (who was a sort of French John Dillinger) managed to wreak major havoc, not only in his native France, but in Canada and the U.S. as well. A folk hero to some, Mesrine fancied himself to be a sort of underworld Renaissance man-master of disguise, self-styled “revolutionary”, and author (he composed an autobiography during one of his numerous prison stints, which was later adapted and published). If there was one thing he loved more than the thug life, it was watching and reading about himself in the media (he once nearly killed a French journalist for writing an unflattering article). I suspect that he would have been especially gratified to have lived to see the day that he became the subject of an epic crime film diptych, currently in limited release in the U.S.