Getting past the odd frisson of watching a film as old as you are (made in 1970), what strikes you most about The Red Circle is how much has changed, and how little, in heist movies. Strange bedfellow criminals, dedicated policemen, a famously silent heist scene as centrepiece - so much is familiar in a movie that is one of the cornerstones of the genre - namechecked by Tarantino and John Woo, amongst others.

What is different is how cool the criminals are, not in the bling-bling sense of today but in their rootlessness, lack of response to others, the sparse dialogue, the sense of being driven by destiny and not any choice they make - not that they would choose any other path than that on which they are headed.

It's all very existential, and the most-quoted line of dialogue ("All men are guilty. They're born innocent, but it doesn't last. We all change for the worse.") probably doesn't help. Anyway, it doesn't matter, this is noir, made by the supremely talented Jean-Pierre Melville and starring Alain Delon. The Red Circle has never been previously released in this country in its full form. And if the pacing is different to that of today's - slower, more deliberate - it just serves to hold off the inevitable denoument.