Jean-Pierre Melville
1967
101 minutes
Your high school French alone was enough to teach you that this film's title translates to "The Samurai", and you get a very small feeling of accomplishment at recognizing this. If you never had high school French but still recognized the title, chalk it up to intuition. There is a concept in linguistics where there are sets of words that are inherited in direct descent or from a common etymological ancestor which often reward this sort of intuition. In this case, both the English word "samurai" and the French word "samourai" were borrowed or inherited from the Japanese word "samurai", which even the Quebecois decided was fine to just use instead of making up some awkward bullshit to describe the concept.
However, as you have discovered in your language studies, such intuition can often lead you astray. Some words are false cognates, in which case you may correctly draw the conclusion that two words mean the same because they sound the same--sometimes even within the same language--but this is only by accident. For example, the English word "isle" (which is related to the French word île and has the same meaning) shares the same meaning as the English word "island". However, "isle" and "island" are etymologically unrelated: "isle" is not short for "island". One comes from Old English by way of Proto-Indo-European and one comes from Latin by way of Old French. Your intuition is correct in connecting them, but the connection is not as direct and solid as you may at first assume. It's like getting the right result in mathematics for the wrong reason.
To make matters worse, some words are false friends, in which case they may be spelled the same or similarly but don't even share meaning, or at least not the one you would think. You'd feel like an asshole if you went to a Gymnasium (basically a "college prep" track high school) and started doing calisthenics in the middle of someone's Calculus class. Similarly you shouldn't go to a librairie in France and expect them to let you borrow books--they're going to expect you to pay for them and not return them. If you need a library, they will happily show you down the road to the bibliotheque, of course.
But in this case, your intuition has not led you astray. However, this is not a samurai film. It's a crime film. Alain Delon plays a hitman in it, but you see, he's a hitman with a code. That's kind of cliche, you think, but shut up. This is Jean-Pierre Melville directing this motherfucker and he's not going to do you wrong. Except maybe for one scene where multiple witnesses are not able to pick out a devastatingly gorgeous Alain Delon in a line-up next to some dudes who, no offense, do not resemble him or achieve his level of attractiveness. You suppose young Sean Connery and Marcello Mastroianni and time-shifted Christopher Reeve and reanimated James Dean weren't available for a bit part in a French crime flick that day.
Speaking of, don't get cocky and think you know what Melville's Un Flic means when you watch that (if it hasn't come up yet). It's a somewhat derogatory French slang term for a "cop", not a slang term for a film or movie. You'll get there eventually and, as with all Melville's films, it will be worth the watch.
Time to choose something different: