Aside from boasting perhaps the finest chase scene ever filmed, William Friedkin’s The French Connection is an outstanding thriller, mixing the grittiness of Brooklyn’s low-life with shocking violence, hilariously insane dialogue and a documentary-style approach to filming. It’s one of the most successful attempts at portraying realism by fattening up the truth with creative liberties, and is easily one of the most suspenseful and enthralling crime movies of all time.

Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle (Gene Hackman) and his partner Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider) are hard-as-nails Brooklyn cops working to uncover a drug smuggling narcotics ring with a mysterious French connection. Tailing Sal Boca (Tony Lo Bianco) leads to several accomplices and a drug exchange intricately set up by criminal mastermind Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey), who’s bringing in high quality heroin from Marseilles. When Alain discovers Doyle’s investigation is getting too close, he has right-hand man Pierre attempt to kill him. Sending in the sniper cues the fast-paced, expertly edited and amazingly realistic car chase for which The French Connection is most famous, and sets off a personal vendetta hunt for the illegal drugs and the cagey Charnier.

Popeye’s porkpie hat is almost as symbolic as Indiana Jones’ fedora, the role is Hackman’s most impressive, and the editing and filming techniques would forever influence true crime and gangster flicks. As with many of the most lauded films ever made, The French Connection offers classic, unforgettable moments. Not only does nearly every chase scene hold up to today’s superior-special-effects standards, the dialogue and craftiness of the characters can’t be topped. Doyle interrogates victims with nonsensical, bewildering phrases, police brutality and bullets; he duels Charnier on the subway, each carefully throwing the other off the scent in a shrewd battle of wits, and ransacks bars looking for drugs – and hitting up contacts. In a moment of irony, Charnier feasts on an exquisite meal at a fancy restaurant while Doyle eats pizza from a bag in the freezing cold. These and more set apart a movie with so many memorable moments, along with every exchange between the gruff detective and his loyal partner Buddy, which are filled with believable, sarcastic humor as if completely improvised.

The hunt becomes an obsession for Doyle – one that cannot be satiated by a simple catch (or with the true events that The French Connection was based on). For the audience too, the thrill of the hunt is vastly more satisfying than the abrupt conclusion. From the opening scene of the film – the murder of someone getting too close to Charnier’s business – to the unrivaled car-vs.-hijacked-train sequence, the biting anticipation and unbeatable suspense of pursuit drives the film in a way that isn’t even slightly outdated. The French Connection is a series of chases involving masterminds outsmarting one another, and the intensity is attributed to wonderfully scummy sets, very fake blood and sensational handheld camerawork. Labeled “induced documentary” filmmaking by Friedkin, the result is a convincingly realistic take on the 1960’s drug bust that revolutionized law enforcement, and a film of sheer excitement and undeniable entertainment.

- Mike Massie

 

Read the Review of French Connection II HERE!

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