Jean-francoisRichet Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I had never heard of Jacques Mesrine before today, but I should have. Take a look at this Wikipedia entry, which matter-of-factly details the dozens of murders, bank robberies and prison escapes pulled off by the legendary French criminal over a 20-year "career." The best part is that he once fled from a sentencing hearing by taking the judge hostage. How can that possibly work?

Anyway, the story's obviously well-known in France, and it has finally made its way to the screen in a two-part biopic called Public Enemy No. 1, starring (who else?) Vincent Cassel as Mesrine. Budgeted at $80 million, it's one of the biggest French productions ever. At least the first of the films is slated to get an October release in France, and the American rights have gone to Senator Entertainment -- the distributor that helped bury All the Boys Love Mandy Lane after the Weinsteins dumped it. Its president promises to do better with Public Enemy, hoping to have the first film in American theaters by the end of the year. He compares it to GoodFellas and Scarface. Honestly, though, Mesrine sounds like more of a badass than Tony Montana.

The movies were directed by Jean-François Richet, who made the not-terrible American remake of John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 a couple of years back. They co-star Gerard Depardieu and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly's Mathieu Amalric (who will also be seen in Quantum of Solace). Oh, and Ludivigne Sagnier, whom I just saw in the very good Love Songs.

Chew on this:

• I've more casting news to bring you for the remake of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, which I posted about here and here. Matthew Goode and Ben Whishaw will be joined by relatively new actress, Hayley Atwell. Her most notable role to date is in Woody Allen's upcoming film, Cassandra's Dream, which will be released in October. In Brideshead, Atwell will play Julia Flyte, the sister to Whishaw's Sebastian and the lover of Goode's Charles Ryder. Being paired with Goode should make for some steamy scenes. The film is set to shoot this May.
• If there is something better than Bill Cosby's Julia Child impression, it might be the news coming out of ShoWest today. It seems that Ratatouille director Brad Bird has divulged that Peter O'Toole will be one of the voices in the upcoming ratty film, that opens June 29. The epic actor's voice is bringing life to a food critic character named Anton Ego. That's enough to make me curious about the film. Basically, the movie is about a rat who wants to become a French chef, but obviously, rats aren't desirable in a kitchen, so craziness ensues.
• The director of Assault on Precinct 13, Jean-François Richet, is setting up a double-feature project based on an infamous gangster named Jacques Mesrine, who is known in France as "the man with 1,000 faces." The first, Death Instinct, has added Gérard Depardieu to the cast as Mesrine's mentor and fellow gangster. Vincent Cassel, who was François Toulour in Ocean's Twelve, has already signed on to play Mesrine. Gerard is probably not the man I'd think of first for the role, but maybe the addage should be: take as much Depardieu as you can get. No?