There’s no escaping one’s fate in any of Melville’s films, but in Le cercle rouge, that inevitability feels especially crushing, if only because the process by which its characters seek to evade their doom is captured with such spellbinding thoroughness. Shot in rich earthy hues with impeccably placed, suggestive splashes of color, the film is consumed throughout much of its runtime by the expert preparative machinations of a trio of heist-minded criminals—ex-con Corey (Alain Delon), escaped suspect Vogel (Gian Maria Volontè) and former cop-cum-marksman Jansen (Yves Montand)—a fixation that amounts to a sustained appreciation for niche expertise as the only constant in a broken, morally bankrupt world. But for all the attention paid in the film to criminal craft, there is an equal, if not greater, focus on the rather intimidating work of the French police force and prison system, each a smooth-functioning bureaucracy with glassy-eyed killers capable of more penetrating, widespread harm than Delon’s icy racketeer. As once character summarizes, “They’re born innocent—but it doesn’t last.”

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