ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Humbersi The first must-see film of the year.

Casey Duggan It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.

rodrig58 It has something of the atmosphere of "Le Samouraï"(1967), directed by the same Jean-Pierre Melville but, it's not at the same quality level. Alain Delon was born to be the villain, not the cop. Catherine Deneuve is beautiful and nothing more. Maybe too blonde. Riccardo Cucciolla is much better in other films such as "Sacco & Vanzetti"(1971), "La violenza: Quinto Potere"(1972) or "Blood on the Streets"(1974)Borsalino and Co.(Original title). The best are the two Americans, Michael Conrad and Richard Crenna. It is the last film signed by Jean-Pierre Melville and unfortunately the worst, his best film of all, in my opinion, being "Le Cercle Rouge"(1970).

Slime-3 The moody opening sequence promises so much, the deserted storm-lashed seaside location, the carefully staged bank 'blagging' and the clever escape all bode well, but it's all down hill from there. The rest of this movie stagnates with a lack of pace, a lack of dramatic effect and far to much screen time given over to dreary details : washing faces, tying shoe laces. To make matters worse the big set-piece features a truly dismal special-effects train robbery straight out of THUNDERBIRDS TV series. Instead of keeping this brief and maintaining some suspension of disbelief it goes on and on and on giving the viewer repeated chances to confirm how unconvincing the model vehicles really are. And this is not the only poor piece of studio work; poorly executed painted backdrops feature in several scenes at a time when on-the-streets reality was already the established way to go. The story is confused, several characters seem superfluous and as the lead character, Alan Delon sleepwalks though the movie. There is laconic and there is plain boring, and sadly he's the latter on this occasion. It's a performance that matches the tone of entire film.

arbesudecon Being Melville my favorite director ever and this his final film, what could I say .I was speechless when I first saw it years ago and even today after several views it still amazes me. Doubtless this was a great ending to his outstanding career, the man who redefined the film noir himself and whose films ,at least half a dozen of them, should be placed among the greatest pieces of film noir ever filmed could not do wrong in his Swang song .And he didn't do wrong indeed, probably it ain't as good as Le Doulous , LeSamurai , Bom Le Flambeur a, Circle Rouge and so on but it comes closer , which by any means does mean that this movie deserves less than a 10 . Initial scene , when the gang arrive to the bank they have planned to rob under the pouring rain , is so beautifully filmed that has become one of my favorite moments in his career.Melville came back once again to his traditional obsessions ( solitude , crime & betrayal, revenge ) and placed them into an amazing heist movie , as a way to explore the human nature.Once again Delon nailed it as the solitary cop and is the prefect vehicle to put face to all these themes. His performance is so chilled out and so classy , in the vein of the silent Jeff Costello , that this is another classic display of acting , no matter whether he plays a thief or a cop you always wanted him to win.You can predict much of the themes and situations you can face here if you've seen Melville's previous films , but nonetheless this doesnñt make them any lessexciting . Plot is pretty basic ,stripped to the very necessary, but what makes the movie are its silences and its ambiances ,totally filled up with hopelessness and despair . Don'texpect much talk here , Melville , unlike Tarantino, can pass on the message through without needing thousands of senseless speeches . In the end whether Delon will catch Crenna didn't seem to matter much, at that point you have come to know and love the characters as they are and how this will end up becomes secundary.

MartinHafer When this film first began, I was pretty pleased. I loved the dialog and the look of the crooks (with trench coats and fedora hats)--it was almost like a late 40s-50s example of film noir but in color. It's obvious that director Melville was trying to copy, to an extent, this retro look and style.If you are an American, the first thing you'll probably notice apart from some noir touches is that two of the gang members in this film are American actors whose lines are all dubbed into French. Richard Crenna and Michael Conrad (from "Hill Street Blues") have major parts in the film. This isn't super surprising as it was pretty common in Europe for studios to use American actors and dub their lines--especially in Italian films. My assumption is that the American actors' star power helped ticket sales, though in some of these cases the actors did NOT contribute well to the film. In some cases this is because the dubbing was done very poorly--fortunately, in this film it's pretty good.The film consists of showing the crime and investigation from two alternating views--the crooks and the cop (Alain Delon). The film bounces back and forth quite often but manages to do this effectively. The caper is a bank robbery in which one of the gang members is shot. However, it's clear they are professionals and they've taken a lot of steps to cover their tracks and effectively hide the loot. Interestingly, however, there turn out to be a few twists. First, the initial robbery was not THE big score in the film--this would come later. Second, while the scene made little sense (why sneak into a hospital to kill a guy you could have killed much easier before YOU dropped him off at the hospital in the first place?!), it was an wild twist to see how the handled the gang member who was shot. This scene with the beautiful Catherine Deneuve was quite shocking...and effective. Third, Delon's role turns out to intersect with the gang in a way you might not expect.Unfortunately, while the film is handled very well in most ways and shows how wonderfully you can make a film with such economy of language (there is VERY little dialog in the film), a major problem in the movie starts at the 53 minute point. The action switches to a train and you see one of the sloppiest uses of models I've seen since the last time I watched a Godzilla film! It looks just a kid's HO-gauge train set and a cheap helicopter model---which is exactly what they must be! Pretty sloppy. What also bothers me about this is that I noticed some score of 10 among the reviews. How can you give a film a 10 with such sloppy effects? I don't expect mega-million dollar effects, but this was just botched badly and looks bad...and a 10 would seem to imply perfection or at least near-perfection. Plus, plot-wise, don't you think someone on the train would have noticed a helicopter hovering just a few yards above the train for so long?! Fortunately, following these dumb scenes the film DID get better! Up until the silly scenes, I might have given this film a 9. However, considering how many scenes were done with crappy looking models, I think a fair overall score is 7 as it still held my interest. Pretty good and with a lot of potential to be a lot better--unfortunately, it's not among Melville's best though it turned out to be his last.