The French Connection (1971) * * * *

 

Directed by:  William Friedkin

Starring:  Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider, Fernando Rey, Tony LoBianco

Aside from one of the most famous chase scenes in movie history, The French Connection boasts a cold, stark realism about police work.   The chases and gunfights punctuate the hours upon hours of surveillance, dead-end leads, and grunt work which are all part of the game.   Detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle (Hackman) is a veteran on the hunt for a multi-million dollar drug shipment coming into New York from France.   He's not a heroic cop; just flawed, dogged, possibly racist, and determined. 

Doyle is as ruthless in his attempts to break the French Connection as the smugglers are in moving their shipments.   If you think about it, the famed chase in which Popeye tries to chase down an elevated train in his car is the Law of Diminishing Returns writ large.   The risks far outweigh the rewards, but not to Doyle, whose single-mindedness borders on obsession.   If you witness his life outside of the job, you see how the job is his life.   What else is there to live for?  

At Doyle's side is loyal partner Buddy Russo (Scheider), whose best scene involves the tearing apart of one of the smuggler's impounded Lincoln Continental.   It is torn to shreds in hopes of locating the heroin stash, with Buddy insisting it has to be in there somewhere.   He approaches Doyle's zeal for nailing the dealers, but not quite because he has some semblance of sanity left.  Hackman won his first Oscar for The French Connection in a take-no-prisoners performance full of relentless indefatigability.  What defines Popeye Doyle is action.   You can see it during the train chase scene how he simply won't quit, and perhaps occasionally he should. 

The French Connection, directed by Oscar-winner William Friedkin, takes place in the coldest, grayest of New York winters contrasted with the Marseilles sun of the south of France.   The characters in New York are in bleak surroundings while the drug lords live it up in expensive suits and large, flashy cars.  A critical scene which reflects the power imbalance between the cops and crooks is a scene where Charnier (Rey) eats with his friends in a fancy restaurant while Doyle surveils him while eating in a pizza joint across the street.   Is this what drives Doyle to take down Charnier and his gang?  Or is it something which Doyle doesn't know himself?   It doesn't much matter, because The French Connection is a taut, exciting thriller make all the more engrossing by its flawed hero.