100
Empire by Kim Newman
Keeping the dialogue minimal and the action high on the agenda, life in Paris' underworld proves to be surprisingly yet suitably violent and threatening.
Le Samouraï
Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
- France,
- Italy
- 1967
- · 105m
Director
Jean-Pierre Melville
Cast
Alain Delon,
François Périer,
Nathalie Delon,
Cathy Rosier,
Catherine Jourdan,
Jacques Leroy
Genre
Crime,
Thriller
Jef Costello is a contract killer that lives alone and likes to keep it cool. After going through various rituals, he kills a nightclub owner. In a rare misstep, Jef realizes there is an eyewitness to the murder. As he works to escape the police, Jef must build an alibi and outrun cops on the Paris metro.
Stream Le Samouraï
What are critics saying?
100
Slant Magazine by Nick Schager
Melville’s 1967 masterpiece, which—through assuming the same systematic attention to detail as its iconically cool protagonist—achieves an atmosphere of mesmerizing, otherworldly beauty and grace.
100
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
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.
100
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
The film is masterful in its control of acting and visual style.
100
The Guardian by Derek Malcolm
Le Samourai is as efficient a piece of cinema as it is darkly romantic.
100
Time Out by Staff (Not Credited)
This is a great movie, an austere masterpiece, with Delon as a cold, enigmatic contract killer who lives by a personal code of bushido.
100
Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington
It is a story of eerie beauty, overpowering fear and almost no solace at all -- save perhaps for a few jazzy chords on the night club piano and the chirp of the bullfinch in that empty, empty room. [06 Jun 1997, p.C]
100
IndieWire by Staff (Not Credited)
An elegantly stylized masterpiece of cool by maverick director Jean-Pierre Melville, 'Le samouraï' is a razor-sharp cocktail of 1940s American gangster cinema and 1960s French pop culture-with a liberal dose of Japanese lone-warrior mythology. [16 Aug 2017]
91
The A.V. Club by Keith Phipps
Le Samouraï is a terrific film, at once a tense thriller and a fascinating character study, and only as cold as it looks until its unforgettable final scene.
90
TV Guide Magazine by Staff (Not Credited)
Melville coolly mixes the conventions of American crime films from the '40s and '50s ( THIS GUN FOR HIRE is one key reference point) with a distinctly European austerity, yet the film still manages to pack quite an emotional punch.
89
Austin Chronicle by Marjorie Baumgarten
From its silent opening moments to its breathtaking double-cross conclusion, Le Samourai is the work of one of the film world's great directors working at his expressive peak.
80
Washington Post
An austere poem of crime, "Le Samourai" manages to have a grip of an old-fashioned potboiler as well. Not a half-bad combination.
80
The New York Times by Vincent Canby
Delon is fine and the movie has the cool delicacy and preci sion one ordinarily associates with something no more philosophical than a Swiss watch. Melville, however, is a philosopher and “The Godson” is as much parable as fascinating melodrama.
75
San Francisco Chronicle by Edward Guthmann
Le Samourai is beautifully assured and has a strong consistency of visual style and tone, but I can't say I had a great time watching it.
75
Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum
Beginning with almost no dialogue at all, Le samourai unfolds like a poetic fever dream.
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