MESRINE: KILLER INSTINCT

★★★ out of four stars

Rating: R for violence, some sexual content and language. In French, subtitled. Theater: Uptown.

This film begins at the end, with a forest of guns and a close-range shooting, and then, barely giving us time to gasp, takes us back where it all began. "Killer Instinct," the first of two parts ("Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1" opens next week), is the couldn't-make-it-up true story of French gangster Jacques Mesrine.

Played by Vincent Cassel with a taut expression and a mustache that seems to grow exponentially with his crimes (then again, it was the 1970s), Mesrine emerges as a coolly efficient, enigmatic figure who seems tailor-made for the movies -- we watch him smoothly impersonate a cop when a couple catch him robbing their home. And Jean-Francois Richet's film is an engaging one, even if it often plays like a re-enacted, high-episodic documentary. The cast is first-rate, particularly Cecile de France as the Bonnie to Mesrine's Clyde, and Cassel in his eerie stillness. In prison, we see him tortured, sobbing, naked, broken, yet resolute. "I'm not dead," he says, and you wonder if anyone -- or anything -- could kill him. Not in this movie, anyway.

MOIRA MACDONALD, SEATTLE TIMES

MAO'S LAST DANCER

★★ out of four stars

Rating: PG for brief violent images, some sensuality, language and smoking. Theater: Edina.

This drama is historical ballet camp. It tells the story of Li Cunxin, plucked from his family as a boy and arduously turned into a star, courtesy of Madame Mao's Beijing Dance Academy, then placed in the Houston Ballet as an exchange student. Based on Li's memoir and directed by Bruce Beresford, it displays the bland professionalism you'd expect from a movie based on an uplifting life. The most interesting elements of Li's story -- dance, politics and the politics of dance -- have been dulled from their source material.

Primo dancer Chi Cao, who plays Li as an adult, is not bad. He makes everything he sees and hears seem like news to him -- capitalism, blondes, disco. But it's sad the way the movies can turn an interesting life into boilerplate. Moreover, the ballets are badly filmed. Beresford has never been a particularly visual director. His movies -- "Tender Mercies," "Driving Miss Daisy," "Double Jeopardy" -- spend a great deal of time watching people. Here, there are some good scenes from Bruce Greenwood, playing the Houston Ballet's artistic director as a vision of effeminacy. His hair bounces along with the rest of him.

WESLEY MORRIS, BOSTON GLOBE

WAKING SLEEPING BEAUTY

★★★ out of four stars

Rating: PG for thematic elements, brief mild language. Thetaer: Lagoon

Imagine a world without Belle from "Beauty and the Beast," Ariel from "The Little Mermaid" or the motormouth genie from "Aladdin." If Walt Disney's once-mighty animation studio had continued its downward spiral, it's likely that none of these now-iconic figures would have seen the light of a projector bulb.

This documentary by former Disney exec Don Hahn offers a fascinating albeit self-congratulatory account of how the studio's animation department was reenergized and reimagined between 1984 and 1994. It's the story of Hollywood titans and a group of upstart artists and writers, drawing (so to speak) from the Mouse House's past and looking to its future. With surprisingly candid commentary from execs Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, this is a story of egos and artistry, of failed projects and inspired collaborations.

STEVEN REA, PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER