MovieChat Forums > Le Samouraï (1967) Discussion > Incredibly Stylish and Well-Acted But...

Incredibly Stylish and Well-Acted But...

posted 8 years ago by avnishanshu87
1 reply | jump to latest

Proved to be pretty weak technically at various points. Here are the things that bugged me throughout the film.

1) Sloppy Jef - He is got to be the sloppiest hitman I have ever seen on screen. The pianist sees him, so do at least 3 other people after murdering Martey. For a hitman who goes to great lengths to cover up his crime, that was just too unrealistic for me. Again, later in the film, he throws his bloody bandages on the road. Why? Agreed this could be a trivial matter but surely there must have been a trash can nearby?

2) Why was he running? - The police had no solid evidence against him or Jane. Not even when they resort to illegal breaking and entering, and bugging his house. "The Wire" has taught me that unless you have a warrant to do so, any evidence collected by using a bug will be termed useless by the court. Was it not the case in France of the '60s?

3) Unexplained Bits - How do the cops find out where Jefs real home was? It is shown that he gets off at a different address and then, gives the cops a slip before he gets shot and finally reaches his real home. Again, towards the end, how do the cops know that Jef was coming to the club to murder Valerie? For that matter, how did Jef know that there must be cops waiting for him at the club, who will shoot him when he takes the gun out, thus allowing him to commit an honourable Seppuku?

If not for the beautiful ending and Alain Delon's impossibly perfect looks and handsome portrayal of a hitman, the movie would have lost its impact on me. Thankfully, it did not. However, I cannot say that I was able to enjoy it through and through, because of the above mentioned bugs.

[–] Liburnius 8 years ago

Very interesting set of questions. This is one of my favorite movies, so I'll think about the issues.

1. I think Jef Costello could have better handled himself during some instances, like the ones you've mentioned. Assassination is risky business, and he must have been aware of that throughout his career, although I think this movie depicts the final days of a killer for hire, behaving somewhat impetuously at the times when they count the most against him. Jef, by this point of his career, could have been simply overconfident in his ways, so as to expect, as usual, nothing too importantly wrong will happen to him.

2. Jef seems to have been rather paranoid the entire film, especially after he got released from the police department. He didn't exactly look it, but I could sense the assassin was tense after a while. There is one little brief scene in which he has an expression on his face that communicates how unsure of his future he is. As for the police surveilling him with the bug in his apartment, to me it was quite clear that the police Commissioner had more reasons than average to suspect Jef of the crime. He didn't appear to be typical among the people they brought over to the department for inspection, and his interaction with Jane that evening may have been a mistake after all, hence the Commissioner saying he had an "airtight alibi," too good to be true.

3. I'm just assuming that the police were able to locate Jef's apartment because there may not have been more than a few, or even one single man in Paris named Jef Costello. They probably found out due to somewhat arcanely sophisticated government knowledge of people's whereabouts, regarding their homes. It could have involved contacting the owner of the apartment building Jef was living at, and getting to confirm his name and room. There could be a continuity error that I am not thinking of correctly, right now, but I understand that if you had problems with the movie because of continuity issues.

"A New Kind of Man" (John Foxx, 1980):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt4oi-PRbN4