Melville's final film... i almost want to call it his TO THE WONDER, despite not having seen TO THE WONDER. this isn't exactly the forum for vetting the unfounded bullshit that wanders through my mind during a movie. Melville seems a bit caught up in the inertia of his own craft, or maybe i'm just put off by such scattered messiness from a man best known for fetishizing precision. here he again explores the moral equivalency of a world so cold that i can't imagine a trench coat ever managed to keep someone warm. Catherine Deneuve with a pistol clutched to her ribs helps finds Melville's jazz noir stylings already in the process of being reborn as kitsch, charmingly helped along by silly analog effects (like the helicopter heist, which disguises its model work about as well as the opening scenes of THE LADY VANISHES some 4 decades prior).

Not classic Melville but an enjoyable cat and mouse hiest caper.

The work of professionals
Reaching doldrum.
The heavy rain and wind
Fly onto baggy eyes.
"Skeptical of skepticism."

Not meant to be a final film, but the heaviness of this work must be contended with as such, where the movement and gestures have little pleasure left. Opens with a bank in a location Antonioni would be proud of, and flows between cops and criminals while always emphasizing the tiredness in everyone's eyes. Hard not to feel somewhat frustrated by the toy train; at least Melville could have cut around it a little more. And you know the American fetishizing Melville was born to use that title.

Like a photograph that's incredibly sharp in the middle, but faded into abstraction at the margins.

More stylish doomed French bad guys.

Melville's last film doesn't quite match the line of films which preceded it, but then again how could it? The opening heist sequence is among the best openings of any film. Brilliant. After that the film moves at a higher pace, there's more music, more special effects (although not quite successful), it even hits at perversity (Alain Delon's cop character's relationship to the transvestite) – so we kind of get an indication on what films Melville could have made had he not died the following year.

Theatrical; 35mm

Not classic Melville but an enjoyable cat and mouse hiest caper.

Like a photograph that's incredibly sharp in the middle, but faded into abstraction at the margins.

The work of professionals
Reaching doldrum.
The heavy rain and wind
Fly onto baggy eyes.
"Skeptical of skepticism."

Not meant to be a final film, but the heaviness of this work must be contended with as such, where the movement and gestures have little pleasure left. Opens with a bank in a location Antonioni would be proud of, and flows between cops and criminals while always emphasizing the tiredness in everyone's eyes. Hard not to feel somewhat frustrated by the toy train; at least Melville could have cut around it a little more. And you know the American fetishizing Melville was born to use that title.

Boys and their (model) toys.
Waiting for a real rain
That will never come.

Click here to read review at Time Out New York.

Melville's final film is less police procedural than existential noir. Utilizing his signature muted palette and somewhat dispassionate flair, he tells the story of two heists, the players involved, and the relative mundanity that comes with the somewhat unexpected lives of those on both ends.

Oda a unos gánsters que nunca existieron. Franceses que llevaban sombrero y gabardina cuando hacía treinta años que habían pasado de moda; que utilizaban nombres americanos; que robaban bancos en días de tormenta; que se disfrazaban de enfermeros para sacar a un compinche del hospital; que asaltaban trenes subidos a un helicóptero aunque fuera de juguete; que utilizaban imanes gigantes para abrir puertas; que paseaban por un Paris de cartón-piedra donde las calles no eran más que un mural pintado en una pared; que cometían errores y morían en un mundo de cabarets, maletines con droga y Catherines Deneuves mil veces mejor que el nuestro.