Director John-Pierre Melville reteamed with his Le Samourai star Alain Delon for this stylish but dull caper thriller. Although that flick is highly esteemed in the film snob circles, it sort of left me cold. This one left me even colder.
Delon stars as a thief who is sprung from his cell early by a crooked prison guard who coerces him into committing a robbery. He reluctantly pairs with hotheaded criminal Gian Maria (A Fistful of Dollars) Volonte against his better judgment. Realizing they can’t pull off the caper without a third man, they enlist the help of a sharpshooting junkie ex-cop (Yves Montand).
Most French New Wave crime movies were aloof versions of American B genre flicks, but with a ton of unnecessary pretension thrown in there to make them more… you know… Frenchy. This one was made a bit after the initial New Wave boon, but the principal is still the same. It feels like Melville was trying to take a sturdy pulpy concept and drain all the life (and fun) out of it just so he could appeal to the arthouse crowd.
Delon was a cool customer in Le Samourai, but here, he is saddled with a bad mustache that kind of makes him look a little dopey. Add to that the fact he looks half asleep most of the time. (In fact, that’s how I looked by the end of the movie.) At least Volonte adds a little life into the proceedings, although he isn’t nearly as memorable as he was in Dollars.
The American translation for Le Cercle Rouge is The Red Circle. That’s fitting because it goes around and around way too much. The film is slick looking, I’ll give it that. I also dug the scene where Montand gets a wicked case of the D.T.’s and starts seeing snakes, rats, and other assorted icky animals slithering all over his body. The heist is well done too. It’s just that after the sluggish start and plodding middle section, it comes up short.
AKA: The Red Circle.
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