good back-story, and good acting

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

LE SAMOURAI is a mysterious crime drama film that is made in the pattern of Hollywood gangster films in the noir genre. Mr. Mellville has added several popular details from Japanese culture into a fictitious gangster story. The protagonists, costumes, nightclubs, streets and murders have all the characteristics of the noir genre.Jef Costello lives in a single-room Paris apartment whose spartan furnishings include a little bird in a cage. He is a professional Parisian assassin-for-hire who, by nature of his work's solitary demands, has no friends. Although he is loved by Jane, Costello knows that she already has a lover. After he successfully wipes out a nightclub owner at the behest of his boss, he is seen leaving the scene by several witnesses, including piano player Valérie. Although he survives a police lineup thanks to a lie offered up by the fearless Valerie, Costello's alibi disintegrates rapidly and his shadowy employer takes out a contract on him. He seeks revenge...This is a sort of moral value test in rough circumstances. Namely, the main protagonist is in conflict with the law, his boss and himself. He does not make the difference between human shades. He does what he is paid for, and that, of course, will lead him to his seppuku.This film contains very little dialogue, characterization could have been better, but, the atmosphere is great.Alain Delon as Jef Costello is an attractive man and a cold-blooded killer at the same time. His selfish nature makes him incompetent to life, but unswerving when it comes to his work. Mr. Delon has offered a very good performance.His support are François Périer as a persistent investigating officer, Nathalie Delon (Jane) as a devoted "fiancé", who provides almost perfect alibi, and Cathy Rosier (Valérie) as a brave and enigmatic piano player.The direction is certainly impeccable, however, the plot is a frozen and the romance is improperly superficial.

Strictly businesslike contract killer Jef Costello (the supremely handsome and commanding Alain Delon, who's the very essence of stoic cool) pulls off a hit that's witnessed by several people. This in turn puts Jef in a precarious bind in which he must rectify the situation as quickly and quietly as possible or else the ever present and pesky police will close in on him.Ably directed with striking austerity by Jean-Pierre Melville, who also co-wrote the tightly constructed script with Georges Pellegrin, with a mesmerizing wordless ten minute opening sequence, a spare moody score by Francois de Roubaix, a cold and detached tone, sly touches of humor, gorgeously glossy cinematography by Henri Decae, a deceptively simple and straightforward narrative that unfolds at a deliberate pace, laconic dialogue, and a strong undercurrent of despair and melancholy (Jef's lonely existence gives this picture an unexpectedly poignant quality), this film not only works as a glorious celebration of smooth elegant style and pure cinema with a refreshing noted emphasis on poetic visuals over long-winded scenes of people talking, but also serves as a potent and provocative existential meditation on fate and destiny. Moreover, Delon's assured and charismatic presence keeps this picture humming; he receives sturdy from Francois Perrier as a determined and calculating police detective, Nathalie Delon as Jef's loyal accomplice Jane Lagrange, and Cathy Rosier as chic pianist femme fatale Valerie. Essential viewing.

Alain Delon has always been one of my favorite actors and this is probably his most accomplished performance as Jef, not least because it is so minimal - and yet there is a character there, a loner who cares for his caged sparrow. The latter is a reflection of Jef, who is trapped and unable to venture out of the world of crime. Like him, the sparrow is constantly on guard against intruders into this closed world, doubling up as watchdog that shrieks to warn Jef of an unwanted presence in the apartment. That relationship alone takes Le Samourai into a different dimension of perception and awareness.The film opens with a reportedly false quote comparing a samurai to a tiger in the jungle. Jef is on his bed, hardly visible, detectable only through a puff of cigarette smoke. This sets the mood for the rest of the film: silence, introspection, and no desire to communicate, let alone explain one's motives. It is a code and Jef abides by it.The sequence that sees Jef steal a Citroen DS is made memorable by Delon's deadpan acting, reflecting both vulnerability and commitment to his samurai-like code, all to an eerie silence. As he drives along, he gets an inviting glance from a beautiful woman driving another vehicle, but ignores her completely. Jef has no interest in distractions like sex, but has two women in his life, one white and blonde (his wife at the time, Nathalie Delon) and the other black, who function like angels of good and bad, life and death, and it is with them mainly that Delon shows touches of humanity and concern.The way he builds his alibi to avoid being charged for the execution of a bar/dance hall owner is highly professional and riveting, brilliantly done throughout, and followed by a subtly comic identification sequence at the police precinct where the witness only does not recognize his face, but remembers all he wore. François Périer is superb as the police captain determined to catch him, and he is perhaps the character who has most lines in the film, but all parts are extremely well acted. The barman is particularly effective in a very short role, looking surprised when he sees Jef act uncharacteristically, and unprofessionally, when he returns to the scene of his crime, thereby breaking his code.Le Samourai is punctuated by quite a few wonderful sequences, action is credible, photography very good and yet economical, and director Jean-Pierre Melville is probably in his best form ever. Given that he made some six or seven films of the highest order, that is no minor feat.This is a much imitated, but never equalled, work. It also has the advantage of no computer tricks, no bombs exploding, no unnecessary violence - just an assassin doing his job. He goes about it zealously, seemingly unflinchingly, but his conscience becomes increasingly present.Le Samourai does not moralize but you come away knowing that, however stylish Delon is, however seductive reclusiveness might seem, and however enticing such professionalism might be, ultimately you cannot run away from yourself.John Woo rated it the most perfect film he ever saw, and I endorse that rating, with a caveat that there are three or four films that I would place on a similar perch. Pity 10/10 is the highest mark I can give, Le Samourai deserves more.

Let us say that a passive fantasist, in a state of semi-stupor, unemployed, inactive, penniless, exhausted, lies stretched out on his bed, smoking what is perhaps his last cigarette. Gradually a notion forms in his mind, and the story begins. This accounts for the air of unreality, the goofs, the mistakes, in this seemingly meticulously planned, but actually extremely ridiculous enterprise. Like in an extended dream, events appear to hang together, but nothing in fact makes a great deal of sense.The hit-man's self-image is exceptionally cool. It would be. The other figures are shadowy and evanescent. They come and go. Their roles are ill-defined. A little caged bird evidently communicates with the central character. I don't think any of this actually happened outside the mind of this virtually wordless dreamer, living in an existential world, disorienting and confusing, meaningless and absurd. Great film, though. All style, from somewhere else, another place, another age.