Le Cercle Rouge (1993)

Disappointment for a huge fan!

Best movie of this year hands down!

The first must-see film of the year.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

(Flash Review)Cut fun the same cloth as Rififi (1955), Rififi is tailored suit, while Le Cercle Rouge is merely something grabbed off the rack. Both are stylish and intricate heist films with minimal dialog and stark shot framing. Le Cercle Rouge starts off with a chap being released from prison and immediately getting back to his bread and butter, stealing, by meeting up with a skilled former policeman and later and unconvincing, I must add, a third man who is actively on the run after a daring escape from police custody. Later on the three plan an elaborate jewelry store heist full of bravado and arrogance. Will they succeed or fail? Live or die? They are all smooth and confident blokes who don't say much which is echoed by the lack of music in the film. While patiently paced, it feels dull at times and there are too many eye rolling plot decisions which hurts the overall effect. Overall, it was stylish and fun but could have been stronger.

Its just as well I was not aware of the running time before deciding to re-watch this classic in Blu-ray as it just might have put me off. Needlessly even so, I must say as this begins sensationally well, even if we are not exactly sure what is happening, and continues at a pace with barely a pause for breath. Actually, I suppose that it is not quite correct because although the first third is the coolest and fastest moving nourish, hardboiled affair, there is something of a near silent pause for the heist itself. Much more visible on the new disc, the meticulous preparations and execution are immaculate, appreciated even by someone like me who thought the actual heist the least appealing feature of the earlier Rififi. The last third of the film comes as something of a disappointment but that is simply the story not in any way a criticism of the mighty directing. Great stuff!

"Le Circle Rouge" from 1970 is a French film. That's another way of saying that a lot of Americans won't like it and won't understand this gritty and underplayed film. The title comes from a made-up Buddhist saying, "When men, even unknowingly, are to meet one day, whatever may befall each, whatever the diverging paths, on the said day, they will inevitably come together in the red circle." Melville made up a saying for Le Samourai as well.One thing we've lost in filmmaking in this country is the art of the buildup. You have to get to the point of the story in five minutes. This film is about a jewelry heist, and the jewelry heist happens very late in the film. Corey (Alain Delon) is released from prison after five years. Just before he leaves, one of the guards tells him about a jewelry heist he can get in on. Corey is uncertain, so instead he goes to his old boss Rico and steals money from him. Rico sends thugs after him to retrieve the money.In a parallel plot, a criminal Vogel (Gian-Maria Volonte) is being transported by train and escapes. He winds up hiding in Corey's trunk while Corey is in a restaurant.Corey finds him, hears his story, and lets him travel by trunk. The car is cut off by Rico's people, and in the ensuing fight, Corey loses the money. Now broke, he decides to join the jewelry heist and include Vogel.They invite a former police detective, Jansen (Yves Montand) to join them. He is a bad alcoholic having the DTs. Somehow he manages to pull himself together and meet with them. The heist is on.I would be surprised if there is one page of dialogue in this script, and yet you keep watching. Perhaps influenced by another classic, Rififi, the heist is carried out in complete silence.The director, Melville, does a magnificent job of keeping us interested, even if there is not much background given of the characters. We know that Delon's boss is sleeping with his former girlfriend, and that's about it. We don't know what made Montand an alcoholic. Melville keeps us focused on their objective. The acting is very smooth, with Volonte (Vogel) a standout who also has the best role. His scene of escaping police and dogs is one of the best scenes in the movie.The police commissioner in the movie states that in the end, all men are guilty, even the police. He believes that we are all tainted with original sin. Maybe so. "Le Circle Rouge" won't do much to convince you otherwise.

What a waste! As I was watching Melville's "Red Circle", I couldn't help but think of life's cruelty. One of the greatest comedic French actors had just started to show how naturally equipped he was for drama, his name was Bourvil but he made a first name out of his breakthrough performance, André, as to distance himself from the lovable buffoon teaming up with De Funès. And yes, André Bourvil as Detective Mattei was mesmerizing without trying, his range of emotions is mostly composed of reactions and the conviction that no matter how hopeless the case is, he must move forward.And it's a waste that such a great actor had to leave the world just when we had a glimpse of his real talent, when he could have ruled French cinema for one decade or two. No, "The Red Circle" was his swan song, a final farewell to the screen he graced for thirty years. Cancer was already devouring him while he was making the film, but just as if he were impregnated by the toughness and stubbornness of his character, he kept going. And maybe that's what manhood is about, moving forward and acting according to his nature. And I think if there ever is a lesson Melville movies could teach us, is this idea of virility not as a synonym of toughness, strength, or a way with women (women have actually very secondary importance in his film) but tenacity, loyalty and principles.All the men that populate Melville's "Red Circle" are driven by a code, not exactly a code of honor, but close enough. Melville would have never dared to entrust his stories to lowlife criminals, he despised criminals with all his heart but acknowledged that gangsters were the best vehicle to values such as loyalty, duty, friendship, that Cinema made appealing. Two years later, a certain movie made by Francis Ford Coppola would prove him right, and Coppola would also suffer from the claim that he romanticized gangsters. Melville's gangsters are men who have been put in the wrong path and following their existential road, can't turn the clock back and have no other choice than trying to put within their dishonest racket, some bits of honor. You know you're not in the right side of the law, but you never try to betray your own codes, fair trade.And this is why the gangsters only kill when they're threatened, why they let the security guard alive during the heist, causing him to set the alarm, this is why the day before, when Vogel (Gian Maria Volonte) who just slipped away from Mattei, hides in the car driven by freshly released Corey (Alain Delon), he doesn't know that Corey saw him and let him do so. When the two men confront each other, a few lines are said and they're barely audible, the essential is in the eyes, the men know they can trust each other, and later, it pays off, when Vogel saves Corey from a tricky situation. What goes between these two recluse, taciturn men is the telepathic understanding that some things are better left unspoken, except the essential: the heist, in men's words: business, action.Melville made "Bob le Flambeur", one of the seminal caper films, but never has a heist looked so fluidly easy and fascinating to watch. There's not one single shot wasted, from the preparation to the execution, everything is perfectly oiled, and I loved the interpretation of Montand as Jansen, a former cop and sharpshooter, they needed one to deactivate the alarm from a thirty meters distance. And Melville is like the God-like manipulator of these figures; his voice sets the tone with a quotation of Buddha about a red circle, a sort of symbolic place where men with a 'history' together end up confronting each other. The line was made up, as it's always the case with Melville, but it serves a purpose, to leave us disillusioned about the heist, this is not what the film is about.We know it's doomed, and it's a masterstroke not to have added some artificial romance as the obligatory 'human factor'… what leads the men to their downfall is just a chain of events implicating Mattei, Corey's former partner (and obvious traitor) and Jean-Pierre Périer as a man with his feet on the two sides. The mechanisms are all set-up from the start and at the end, we're just accepting the facts with resignation, Corey and Vogel had it coming but somewhat, we don't think they deserved it, and the last line coming from Jansen about the Police is ambiguous but gives a hint about his 'personal' motives. Sometimes, it's not just business. All men have history and it's the record they try to settle that drive their actions. Again, that was two years before Coppola.One of the most memorable lines of the film (given the film's overall quietness, any powerful line was a high spot) was: "every man is guilty, we're born innocent but it never lasts", says the Chief of Police to Mattei in the beginning and the end, Mattei walks away repeating "all guilty", everyone is part of the same game, it's all about deception and betrayal, crooks playing fair, cops cheating, and that's the only way to make these two worlds meet, and this is why there's always one raison to root for all the characters, not enough to make the endings sad, only realistic albeit cynical. That's what this smiling Buddha in the opening title seems to express: cynicism, disillusion, whatever you build will be wasted.And what a waste that these men lost after all these efforts but more importantly that André Bourvil died so shortly after the film, and that a director of Melville's caliber would die 3 years later after his second feature film with Delon "Un Flic". When real life is cruel, you'll find more relief in Melville's films.