Le Samouraï – Film Review

This stylish, icy cool 1967 crime thriller starring Alain Delon has been on my movie radar for ages, so I was excited to catch its 4K restoration on the big screen.

On the evidence of Le Samouraï alone, Alain Delon is a genuinely great movie star, and arguably the most beautiful man ever committed to celluloid. You would rarely if ever use the word ‘beautiful’ to describe a male actor, but this is one instance where no other word feels adequate. When a key witness in the film takes a surprising stance concerning Jef Costello, Delon’s hired killer, there are other things in the mix than his looks, but if it turned out that she was simply moved by his chilly angelic beauty I can’t say I would be surprised.

Jef is a solitary animal, living in a grubby apartment with a drab-looking bird in a cage as his only companion. He has a lover, Jane (Nathalie Delon, Alain’s wife), who is deeply loyal to him despite living in a separate, much more luxurious apartment where she’s regularly visited by other men. Jane provides an airtight alibi for Jef’s next job, a contract killing of a nightclub owner, which he executes with ruthless skill.

Then it all goes fatally wrong. He’s seen by the club’s gorgeous piano player, and fails to remove what is clearly a dangerous witness, either out of chivalry, infatuation or some kind of personal moral code. Other patrons get a glimpse of Jef as well, and when he’s arrested as a part of mass sweep of suspects, his employers decide that Jef is too much of a liability, alibi or not.

The movie is a tremendously effective and stylish French remix of American gangster films, shot with a monochromatic, pared down palette of muted blues and greys. It’s impressive how much is accomplished here through visual language alone, without any dialogue. You can easily see how this meticulous study of a lone assassin and his rituals influenced the likes of David Fincher’s The Killer, and how Delon’s impassive protagonist became a cinematic template for a certain kind of taciturn, lone wolf anti-hero. It is also a lot more understated and slow-burn than most modern thrillers, which has its trade-offs. I admired the film’s restrained approach, but I confess that a small part of me wished for a bit more pulpy oomph and punch in certain scenes.

Alain Delon barely moves a facial muscle throughout the film, and speaks in the same emotionless monotone on rare occasions he does get to speak. But he’s anything but dull or listless. His performance is full of precise, efficient gestures, whether he’s carefully adjusting his fedora hat or going through his collection of keys to start a stolen car, one by one. He moves through the world with the alertness of a wild predator moving through the jungle, constantly coiled for action. I’m pretty sure that I could watch him going down the stairs and corridors while looking effortlessly cool and handsome for hours.

Because he remains such an inscrutable enigma, I wasn’t sure what to make of Jef’s final act, but weirdly enough it only added to the allure and mystique, and made for a hell of a memorable ending. Despite its painstakingly methodical nature, there’s a strange dreamlike quality to the movie that made me feel differently about the details that would have come off as poorly motivated or unrealistic in a more grounded film.