Melville distills emotions to rarefied minimalist gestures ... and offers a stringent morality of self-discipline, both his heroes' and his own.

Characteristic of Melville's crime canon, the film's rigorously mannered aesthetic creates a decidedly artificial environment, and yet that environment is so meticulously, thoroughly realized that it's breathtakingly immersive.

A labyrinthine exploration of loyalties and betrayals in the French underworld.

Second breath, inexorable suffocation