An ambitious meditation on fate disguised as a crime caper, Melville is attempting to stretch the genre to its existential limits, using traditional cops-and-robbers plot machinations as a foundation to explore desperation and the desire to survive. It doesn’t always work quite as well as you might hope, possibly because it’s longer than it needs to be, but you can’t fault Melville’s ambition and the manner in which he turns what most consider to be a minor genre into a moving character study. Lino Ventura is also superb as the aged gangster fighting for survival in a world that has moved on, but not necessarily for the better. (DVD)