Le samouraï 1967

Janet Maslin, New York Times: [Melville's] style remains haunting and elegantly spare, just right for the kind of hit man who lives in silence, in bare and colorless surroundings, with a lonely caged bird. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: 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. Read more

Penelope Gilliatt, New Yorker: Cold, masterly, without pathos, and not even particularly sympathetic; it has the noble structure of accuracy. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: 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. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: One of the pleasures of Le Samourai is to realize how complicated the plot has grown, in its flat, deadpan way. Read more

Edward Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle: To each his own. Filmmakers as diverse as Quentin Tarantino and Paul Schrader were influenced by Melville, and Hong Kong action director John Woo calls the film 'the closest to a perfect movie that I have ever seen.' Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Delon's inscrutable presence adds to an unnerving atmosphere of anticipation. You feel that something bad could come crashing into the frame at any second. And you would be right. Read more

Derek Adams, Time Out: Melville's film had a major influence in Hollywood. Read more

Variety: Read more