Le Samourai - The Criterion Collection

In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon (Purple Noon) 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 armour of fedora and trench coat can protect him.

An elegantly stylized masterpiece of cool by maverick director Jean-Pierre Melville (Army of Shadows), Le samouraï is a razor-sharp cocktail of 1940s American gangster cinema and 1960s French pop culture with a liberal dose of Japanese lonewarrior mythology.