As a big Melville fan, I found this somewhat disappointing.

This has the same signature cold style I love in many of his other movies, but the plot isn’t as gripping as his other films. It does have some technical sequences that are extremely impressive, but didn’t give me as much reason to care about its characters.

Part of it (which is partially my problem) is I was mixing up the characters all the time. There’s groups of men in trench coats all the time, and I was confused who was a good guy and who was a bad guy. 

Don’t know how they got Catherine Deneuve to show up for a small supporting role but that was a fun surprise!

question #23:
who said “my, what pretty eyes you have…”?

a) jean-pierre melville
b) sergio leone
c) the big bad wolf
d) every single freaking one of them probably

*
( fabricated reality )

Jean-Pierre Melville was the absolute master of cinematic cool. It's quite sad that this was his final outing, but one can undoubtedly pick up on the pieces that it left for future crime films from both narrative and stylistic points of view. The train sequence is simply a marvel to watch!

Still recovering from THAT movie

Films like Le Samourai showed Melville was what would many will call "an auteur". He has a style of its own, that style will either make it or break it for everyone.

So what's that style, you may be asking? Well, there's an almost 20 mins greatly choreographed heist scene that has almost no dialogue and zero music. The complete opposite from what you will expect from a heist or suspended movie at the moment, this gives a sense of realism.

All performances are as well as quite, but very good. Seeing often bad guy Alain DeLeon playing for the good guys was really nice.

All in all, while it's very quite nature didn't align with my more bombastic and kinetic taste, this is still a nice and stylistic suspense/cop movie.

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).

You can completely see the influence Melville had on all writers and directors working in the crime genre. Even with something like Un Flic which doesn't always work, there are so many touchstones that could link you to countless other movies. I do wonder if Melville cast his main characters here based on their eyes alone, because they are all striking. The helicopter/train heist has some woeful special effects, but the actual heist is really fun and well done. There is a cold blue colour tint to everything, and in the early going during a rain storm it really does a lot to set the mood and atmosphere. However, when the same tint is used for every indoor scene as well it does start to get a little oppressive.

Please note this is a review of a movie, not a law enforcement officer. Please see my account at Blotterboxd for police reviews

The world as seen through the blue eyes of Alain Delon's frighteningly cold detective. The criminals are introduced as fedora wearing silhouettes in a car, a powerfully mysterious image that sets the quiet, cool tone of everything that follows. My favorite scene is a very long take of a man changing clothes and hiding evidence as part of an elaborate train heist. I know this is the kind of thing that drives some people (hi Matt!) crazy with boredom, but to me it shows such a respect for criminal enterprises as a skilled trade, as labor.

“The only feelings mankind inspires in policemen are indifference and scorn.”

very fun and super stylish! i absolutely could Not! keep track of the characters because they all look like old white guys but i still got the gist of everything going on.

For a movie that quotes itself as an epigraph iys pretty fucking cool. The heist scenes are breathtakingly gripping. The central drama isn’t that complex. Nor are it’s characters, however the movie is so dynamic and efficient in its storytelling and compelling in its sequences that it doesn’t really matter. Just like the obvious models don’t distract from a superb train heist scene

like if steely masculinity made a movie and it was boring. alain delon was hot playing the piano, though, I guess.

Something about transitioning to a second caper 2/3 of the way into the film felt false to me. This is about bank robbers who kind of botch a job and are on the run from the cops, so when that gets more or less buttoned up and they jank a briefcase full of drugs off a train, the trademark Melville silent heist happens I found little to be thrilled by.
The look of this movie is solid though and, despite the model trains making the big centerpiece burglary look like a Thomas the Tank Engine outtake, there's a lot to like. It's just a little unfortunate to be kind of bored by Alain Deleon and Catherine Deneuve while being absolutely confused why Colonel Trautman (Richard Crenna) was being dubbed into French.

Fairly boiler plate outside of that unbelievable train sequence, but that sequence makes the rest of the film worth watching. So clear that Mann cribs from Melville all the time, but I can’t blame him because I’d do the exact same thing if I made movies. One of my personal favorite visual stylists. Love the whole look of the opening heist. Melville is fantastic at creating and building tension and I can’t get enough of his heist sequences.

Melville goes out with neither a bang nor a whimper. Really the only thing that keeps it from being a run of the mill heist/cop film is the color palette, which gives you an idea of what Playtime would be like if it had been a crime film. The train heist is frankly a bit boring and the model work is laughable.

CC2021 #24

A Nonchalantly Cool Big Heist/Detective Hollywood Blockbuster only that it’s not from Hollywood, it’s wasn’t blockbuster, it’s french and made on a relatively low budget, with JP Melville’s usual dose of high tension and word less action sequences, and it features Alain Delon’s beautiful & angelical face

Great flic