Le Samouraï

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.

"The closest thing to a perfect movie that I have ever seen." – John Woo

"Jean-Pierre Melville's coolest, sleekest, and most influential salute to the French underworld." – Michael Sragow, The New Yorker

"The beauty of Le Samouraï isn't its plot, but the assured handling of tone, mood, and style, which tips its hat to the noir of the past while standing out as a unique heady cocktail of its own." – Angelica Jade Bastien, Vulture