Le Cercle Rouge (French pronunciation: [lə sɛʁkl ʁuʒ], "The Red Circle") is a 1970 crime film set mostly in Paris.

It was directed by Jean-Pierre Melville and stars Alain Delon, Bourvil, Gian Maria Volonté, François Périer and Yves Montand.

The same morning another prisoner, Vogel, who was being taken on a train from Marseille to Paris for interrogation by the well-respected Commissaire Mattei, manages to escape in open country.

Meanwhile, Corey, who has understood what this huge police activity is about, stops at a roadside grill in the epicentre of the manhunt, leaving his car boot unlocked.

However, the fence refuses to take the goods, having been warned off by a vengeful Rico, who had been told inadvertently by the prison warden from the beginning that Corey was on the job.

According to Canby:[5] Peter Bradshaw, in a 2003 review of a 102-minute reissue, called the film a "treat" and noted "Melville blends the Chandleresque world of his own devising with gritty French reality.

With its taut silent robbery sequence, his movie gestures backwards to Rififi, and with Montand's specially modified bullets it anticipates Frederick Forsyth's Day of the Jackal and the contemporary techno-thriller.

"[6] Hong Kong director John Woo wrote an essay for the Criterion DVD of Le Cercle Rouge arguing the film's merits.