It combines stylish direction, an intelligent script, first-rate performances, and overpowering atmosphere into one of the most tense and absorbing thrillers ever to reach the screen.
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01/01/00
Le Samourai (1967)
100
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:25
Fresh:25
Rotten:0
Average Rating:8.3/10
Runtime: 1 hr 35 mins
Genre: Foreign Films
Synopsis: When a stoic, icily professional assassin is witnessed leaving the scene of a nightclub "hit" by a barroom pianist who doesn't let on to the cops, he discovers that he's being set up for something... [More]
Starring: Alain Delon, Nathalie Delon, Francois Perier, Caty Rosier
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
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Reviews for Le Samourai
Top CriticMelville is much more interested in procedures than action. The film is so stripped down that we learn as much as we need to know about Jef in the film's first 15 minutes.
01/01/00
Top CriticAlain Delon, who was attacked by some narrow-minded reviewers in his day for being stiff, is perfectly cast here, displaying a cool, calm demeanor at first, then an equally calm desperation as the chase gets more intense.
01/01/00
Le samourai expresses a kind of loneliness to be sure, but it's that of a teenage male dreaming about Hollywood movies and their accoutrements -- penthouse apartments, acerbic cops, melancholy city streets, smoky card games, fancy jazz nightclubs.
01/01/00
Top CriticFedoras and trench coats. Film noir in cool blues and greens. Frenchman Jean-Pierre Melville's 1967 film Le Samourai is the real deal.
01/01/00
One of the pleasures of Le Samourai is to realize how complicated the plot has grown, in its flat, deadpan way.
01/01/00
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