(skip this header)  Friday, December 13, 2013  seattlepi.com
Businesses  « Back to Article  Restored 'Cercle Rouge' is an
austere beauty  SEAN AXMAKE, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, June 19, 2003 Larger | Smaller
Email This Page 1 of 1  Crime cinema has never been so
meticulously and coolly executed as in Jean-Pierre Melville's
1970 heist classic "Le Cercle Rouge."  Corey (Alain Delon), a
taciturn thief released from prison after five years, and Vogel
(spaghetti western icon Gian Maria Volonte), a criminal suspect
who escapes from custody into the French countryside, cross
paths as if by fate. Or so the (fictional) philosophical quote
that opens the film suggests.  Bonding by saving each other's
life, they team up for a daring jewel heist and draft a soused
ex-cop and former sharpshooting champion (Yves Montand) to make
the duo a trench-coat chic trio.  It goes without saying that
the pathetic drunk regains his self respect when the crooks give
him their trust, and that Commissaire M