French actor Vincent Cassel is to play France's most notorious mobster in a new biopic. The Ocean's Thirteen star, who has a string of bad guy roles to his credit, will play 70s gangster Jacques Mesrine in a new film based on bestselling autobiography Death Instinct, which Mesrine wrote in jail.

Cassel says, "He was France's Public Enemy Number One and he got executed in the middle of the street by police, in front of everybody. For the movie, we got involved with everybody, like Mesrine's ex-wife, his kids, the people who came out of jail 30 years later, who were involved with him at the time. In France, he's this icon because he was against the government, the Mafia, he was a real rebel."

(This news article provided by World Entertainment News Network)