On the same day that IFC Films announced it had acquired the North American distribution right to Steven Soderbergh's Che, the Toronto Film Festival unveiled half of another ambitious, long-in-the-works, two-part bio-pic — this one based on the life of legendary French bank robber and jailhouse memoirist Jacques Mesrine. Shot over eight months, on three continents, at a reported cost of $80 million, the two films were originally set to be directed by Oscar-nominee Barbet Schroeder (Reversal of Fortune) with actor Benoît Magimel in the leading role, before a series of pre-production debacles — including a widely reported 2004 head-butting incident between producer Thomas Langmann and Magimel's agent — caused French distribution giant UGC to back away from financing the project. After the dust settled, the films recommenced with Vincent Cassel as Mesrine and Jean-François Richet (who helmed the American remake of Assault on Precinct 13) in the director's chair. (Schroeder and Magimel, meanwhile, headed off to Japan to make the thriller Inju, the Best in the Shadow, also screening in Toronto.)

Following its world premiere here, the first Mesrine movie, The Death Instinct, will open in French cinemas on October 22, followed one month later by the concluding chapter, Public Enemy Number One. Already, there are rumors that the two halves will be edited down into one “international version” for consumption by the rest of the world. That's not exactly a bad idea. While it isn't quite as d.o.a. as some other starry, high-profile premieres at Toronto this year, The Death Instinct turns out to be a surprisingly paint-by-bullets gangster movie that relates Mesrine's exploits in enervating, one-thing-after-another fashion. First this happened (Mesrine serves in the French army during the Algerian War). And then this (Mesrine is taken under the wing of an older, wiser gagster played by Gérard Depardieu). And then that (Mesrine lands in jail, briefly flirts with an ordinary civilian life, picks up his pistol once more).

Richet is a more-than-competent craftsman who occasionally indulges in some nifty, Brian De Palma-esque bits of split-screen trickery. Mostly, though, The Death Instinct is a series of glittering surface effects in search of the psychological or sociological hook that might have turned the movie into the French Scarface or Bonnie and Clyde, which is what it so clearly aims to be. Fast sports cars whiz by. Various beautiful women fling themselves at Mesrine, usually with disastrous consequences. And the exotic backgrounds cycle through like a neighbor's vacation slide show: Here we are on the beach in Spain in 1960. Here we are laying low in Montreal in 1968. Here we are getting arrested by American cops in the Arizona desert in 1969. At once all too much and not enough, Richet's film is so crammed with incident that it feels like we're watching Mesrine's life in fast-forward, and yet the incidents themselves are so tedious and repetitive that a good 45 minutes of the movie could easily have been left on the cutting-room floor.

The Death Instinct opens with a disclaimer stating that any film based on true incidents must necessarily take a certain authorial perspective on those facts, and thus “to each his own point of view.” Would that this were the case here. Instead, viewers unfamiliar with Mesrine's story are likely to spend most of Richet's movie wondering why such a racist, misogynistic tyrant has remained an enduring icon of French popular culture (inspiring songs, posters, T-shirts, et al.) for the last 40 years. The only figure who pops from this flattened panorama is Orchestra Seats ingenue Cécile De France as Mesrine's partner in life and crime, Jeanne Schneider — a dark, sultry femme fatale who seems dangerous even before she coolly picks up a shotgun and helps Mesrine take down a crowded casino. A movie all about her — now, there would be something to see.

Although not a bio-pic per se, the self-reflexive action comedy JCVD derives its title from the initials of its leading man, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and features the 47-year-old action star playing more or less himself in a screwily entertaining farce concocted by French director Mabrouk El Mechri. I first heard about this movie when it screened in the market at this year's Cannes Film Festival, where it earned enthusiastic praise from several discerning colleagues. Now I've caught up with it here in Toronto, and, simply put, it's a blast. Floundering in direct-to-video obscurity and stuck in a messy divorce proceeding, Van Damme walks into a Belgian post office and right into a robbery-in-progress engineered by a trio of incompetent hoods, who proceed to make it look as if the actor himself is the criminal mastermind. A media circus soon ensues. Dog Day Afternoon this isn't, but Mechri keeps things jaunty and energetic, with lots of deft potshots at the vagaries of fame and success. (After bad-mouthing John Woo for failing to cast Van Damme in any films after Hard Target, one of the robbers concedes, “On the other hand, when you see Windtalkers, there's a justice.”) And Van Damme is a pleasure to watch — funny and light on his feet, at once playing it straight and winking at the audience — particularly in a third-act, direct-to-camera, autobiographical monologue that should silence all those who thought that the Muscles From Brussels was all bulk and no brains. Don't get me wrong: Mickey Rourke doesn't have to worry about any competition here when Oscar time rolls around. But JCVD may well be the most pure fun to be had in a Toronto movie theater this festival year.

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