With Le cercle rouge, his
diamond - hard penultimate film, Melville mounted one of his most masterful entries in the crime -
thriller genre, an elegantly stylized
heist film in which a taciturn trio of thieves (Alain Delon, Yves Montand, and Gian Maria Volonté) orchestrate an intricate jewelry - store robbery, their fates hanging in the balance as a dogged police inspector (André Bourvil) closes in.