Cathy Rosier

In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts. After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef finds himself caught between a persistent police investigator and a ruthless employer, and not even his armor of fedora and trench coat can protect him. 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.

During the prohibition era, Cornelius, a bootlegger, is on the run from the American coastguards. He comes across a silent film actress, Linda, on the set of a movie and falls in love with her.

A veteran paratrooper murders his Vietnamese wife when he finds her in the arms of a younger man. Garal (Maurice Ronet) makes it back to the army base where his drunken roommate provides him with an iron clad alibi. Jauran (Michel Bouquet) is the local police inspector who befriends the Garal, unaware he is the killer. The younger man is accused of the woman's murder, but the paratrooper begins to feel overwhelmed with guilt. The longer he remains silent about the crime, the more psychological torture he must endure.