Vincent Cassel makes resentment hard to ignore, using his body as much as his voice. We rate him most when the film gives him more to do than intimidate, and La Haine remains our strongest recommendation.
Fi1m perspective
In La Haine (1995), Vincent Cassel’s Vinz is so insistently resentful that we begin to feel crowded by him. There is something wearing about the performance, deliberately so: here is someone who cannot leave his anger alone. Yet Hubert Koundé’s Hubert and Saïd Taghmaoui’s Saïd make him convincing as a friend, not simply a source of trouble. We laughed more than we expected at their exchanges because the familiarity between them survives the hostility. Mathieu Kassovitz gives Cassel dialogue and fellow actors that stop all that force becoming monotonous.
La Haine was his breakthrough, and the volatile men kept coming. His English-language work included Elizabeth (1998), followed by Ocean’s Twelve (2004). He also took on extreme material in French cinema, playing Marcus in Irreversible (2002). The danger in such casting is repetition. An actor so readily associated with brutes can become a convenient way for a film to announce trouble without writing much of a character.
Ocean’s Twelve finds a lighter use for that competitive energy, casting him as François Toulour, the rival thief who wants everyone to know he is better. Steven Soderbergh’s sequel is too pleased with its own company, and too reluctant to let us see the work of the heist. Cassel gets a sequence of physical showing-off that gives us something difficult actually being done. The sequence works because we can watch the skill rather than hear about it afterwards. It does not fix the film, but it makes better use of Cassel than merely asking him to look dangerous.
Playing Jacques Mesrine in the two-part Mesrine: Killer Instinct / Public Enemy No. 1 (2008) gave him scope for substantial physical transformation. Darren Aronofsky later cast him as demanding ballet director Thomas Leroy in Black Swan (2010). Kassovitz remains our clearest example of a director putting Cassel’s energy to good use, because he makes room for the humour too. Start with La Haine, and pay as much attention to the friends as to Cassel.
Biography
Vincent Cassel is a French actor. Born in Paris in 1966, he is the son of actor Jean-Pierre Cassel. He first achieved recognition for his performance as a troubled youth in Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine (1995), for which he received César Award nominations.
Cassel has appeared in numerous international films, including Ocean's Twelve (2004) and Ocean's Thirteen (2007) as François Toulour, Eastern Promises (2007), Black Swan (2010) as Thomas Leroy, and Jason Bourne (2016). He won the César Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Jacques Mesrine in the 2008 films Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Mesrine: Public Enemy Number One. He has also worked in television, including a role in the series Westworld (2016).
