Synopses & Reviews
In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays blue-eyed Jef Costello, a fedora- and trench-coat-wearing contract killer with samurai instincts. When Jef assassinates a nightclub owner, he finds himself confronted by a series of witnesses, who drop his perfect world into the hands of a persistent police investigator and Jef's shadowy employer, both of whom are determined to put an end to the smooth criminal. A razor-sharp cocktail of 1940s American gangster cinema and 1960s French pop culture with a liberal dose of Japanese lone-warrior mythology maverick director Jean-Pierre Melville's masterpiece defines cool. Criterion's DVD will also include new video interviews with two Melville historians, a collection of excerpts from archival interviews with Melville, Delon, and others, the trailer, a reprinted tribute by filmmaker John Woo, and more.
Special Features
New, restored high-definition digital transfer
New interviews with historians Rui Nogueira and Ginette Vincendeau
Interviews with Melville, Alain Delon, Cathy Rosier, Nathalie Delon, and more
Theatrical trailer
New and improved English subtitle translation
Essay by film scholar David Thomson
Tribute by filmmaker John Woo