Dawn and I recently watched Mes­rine: Killer Instinct and Mes­rine: Pub­lic Enemy Num­ber 1, a semi-fictionalised account of the life of Jacques Mes­rine, France’s most fam­ous bank rob­ber. Apart from a brief period work­ing in an architect’s prac­tice, Mes­rine (played by Vin­cent Cas­sel) made a liv­ing from illegal activ­it­ies. A pro­fes­sional crim­inal has to do more than rob one bank, kill one thug. He must com­mit to the life, wear the bul­let scars and break out of the pris­ons that try to con­tain him. Dick Hobbs says a pro­fes­sional crim­inal isn’t one who works full time as a crim­inal, but one who accesses a crim­inal know­ledge base and infra­struc­ture to facili­ate their work (2006: 421). Mes­rine does all this. In Killer Instinct, Guido (Gérard Depardieu) is the gang­ster boss who trains Mes­rine and incul­cates him into the pro­fes­sional code. This code is illus­trated most not­ably when Mes­rine returns to the Cana­dian jail he escaped from, to spring the other inhab­it­ants. It’s all very exciting. 

mesrine and guido

But dur­ing Pub­lic Enemy Num­ber 1, des­pite sev­eral more rob­ber­ies, shoot­ings, a kid­nap­ping and prison escapes, I did start to shift in my seat, yawn­ing. It turns out the mid-life career of a pro­fes­sional bank rob­ber is only little more excit­ing than the mid-life career of the pro­fes­sional bank clerk. The rou­tin­isa­tion of Mesrine’s crim­inal life serves as warn­ing against crime, not because of the danger, but because of the tedium.

Ref­er­ences

  1. Hobbs, D. (2006) ‘The Nature and Rep­res­ent­a­tion of Organ­ised Crime in the United King­dom’ in Fij­naut, C. and Paoli, L. Organ­ised Crime in Europe: con­cepts, pat­terns and con­trol policies in the European Union and bey­ond. Springer.