90
Melville seems to peer out from behind the camera with a reassuring wink and nod. Le Cercle Rouge is the most self-consciously cool of his famously underheated films noirs.
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What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
80
Chicago Reader by Bill Stamets
Key action points are edited with finesse, but the denouement, with its dutiful hail of gunfire, is heartless and mechanical.
100
Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt
A glistening gem among caper movies, this impeccably elegant jewel-heist drama takes its title from Buddhist lore, its cast from France's great gallery of leading men, and its style from the unique blend of cinematic savoir-faire and brooding existential angst.
90
Washington Post by Desson Thomson
For students of cool ... Le Cercle Rouge is required viewing.
80
A work of leisurely development and tragic inevitability.
75
New York Daily News by Jack Mathews
If you've got the patience, this is still one of the all-time exercises in cinematic cool.
100
Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington
Watching Le Cercle Rouge, we're caught up in a world that, however improbable some of its twists and turns seem, strikes us as a perfect, imaginative creation.
90
New York Magazine (Vulture) by Peter Rainer
At its best, the film compares favorably to its obvious antecedents, "Rififi" (which Melville once hoped to direct) and "The Asphalt Jungle."
100
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
There is one cool, understated scene after another.
100
For some of us, this constitutes a religious event.