"Public Enemy Number One (Part 1)" charts the outlaw odyssey of Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel), the legendary French gangster of the 1960s and 1970s who came to be known as Public Enemy Number 1 both in Canada and France and The Man of a Thousand Faces. Infamous for his bravado and outrageously daring prison escapes. Mesrine carried out numerous robberies, kidnappings and murders in a criminal career that spanned continents until he was shot dead in 1979 by France's notorious anti-gang unit. Thirty years after his death, his infamy lives on.
Mesrine was helped along the way by beautiful and equally reckless Jeanne Schneider (Cecile de France), a Bonnie to match his Clyde. Mesrine made up his own epic, between romanticism and cruelty, flamboyance and tragedy. Both a thriller and a biopic, "Public Enemy Number One (Part 1)" explores the man behind the icon.