"And in the course of this haunting, often grueling film, Mr. McQueen makes you acutely conscious of the relationship between language and action, the gap between relatively abstract terms like 'resistance,' 'radicalism' and 'hunger strike' and the concrete deeds that give them flesh. The scope of 'Hunger' is too narrow, its methods too intensive, to offer anything like a full historical analysis of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and it does not really set out to explain why Sands and his comrades did what they did. Instead Mr. McQueen shows how they did it, and in what circumstances, and the fruit of his inquiry is both horrifying and, strange to say, beautiful." (NY Times)But is it boring? Yes, but it's redeemed by a welcome stretch of dialogue in the second act, if something this boring can be said to have acts.
"Vincent Cassel is the overwhelming fact of both films. He doesn't give Mesrine great depth, because how can he? The man was a psychopath, immune to movie psychology. But he gives him great presence. He is brutal, ugly, powerful and inscrutable. In other roles he's none of those things; he looks nice when he smiles. But he finds such cold ferocity in Mesrine that he's like a wild animal who kills for survival. I don't think Mesrine likes killing. He just frequently has to." (Roger Ebert)But is it boring? Yes.
"The build-up to this slaying forms the opening scene to Jean-François Richet's terrific film, though the sequence is presented in a tricksy split-screen manner, misleadingly hinting that the film will be in the wacky Anglo-Saxon style of The Italian Job or The Thomas Crown Affair. Instead, Mesrine is in the tradition of Jules Dassin's Rififi or Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Cercle Rouge: muscular, forthright storytelling, hard-smoking, hard-drinking action, horribly incorrect attitudes, brutality with a top-note of self-loathing, bushy moustaches and a cracking lead performance from Vincent Cassel as Mesrine." (The Guardian)But is it boring? No.
