Product: French Connection [VHS] (1971)
Rating: 5.0
A Superior Crime Drama With Superb Action And Performances
The French Connection remains one of the classics of film. For brilliance of portrayal and suspense, it is timeless.The film embodies what drives its two protagonists. Alain Chanier (Fernando Rey) is a dapper businessman on the outside, ruthless killer and drug kingpin on the inside. NYPD Detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman in a deserved Oscar-winning performance) is a hyped-up cop who pursues his quarry with glee, but is also quite likeable. The contrasts are best shown in two early scenes - Chanier's dapper nature comes through when he and his wife Marie exchange gifts for their pending trip to the US; Popeye Doyle's nature comes through in a thoroughly engaging scene when he and his partner Cloudy Russo (Roy Scheider in what should have won him an Oscar) bust a lowlife junkhouse bar; Popeye accosts men twice his size, pulls "dropsy", and all knowing none of these scumbags will dare protest. The raid, though, is cover so Popeye can debrief one of his best informants (Alan Weeks); the informant reveals the coming of "a shipment" (Chanier's) in two weeks. To make the ruse look good, Popeye reluctantly busts the man's jaw (the grimace on Popeye's face as he does so is priceless.).Adding to the tension is the presence of FBI Agent Bill Mulderig (stuntman Bill Hickman in a superb performance), who hates Popeye, blaming him for the death of an officer in a previous case. The two quarrel several times and come to blows at one point.Through it all, Popeye trails Chanier and his American friends, lawyer Joel Weinstock, candy store owner Sal Boca (Tony Lo Bianco), actor Henri Devereaux (Frederique De Pasquale), and others. When Chanier barely escapes Popeye's pursuit, he has his henchman Pierre Nicoli try to kill him. But the sniper attack is botched, and the result is a thrilling chase; Nicoli hijacks an elevated train (killing a policeman and the train's conductor in the process), and Popeye commandeers a car to pursue. When the motorman passes out the train crashes, allowing Popeye to corner and then kill Nicoli. It is the unique nature of the chase as well as its execution that makes it a film classic. Most car chases involve cars chasing cars; a car chasing a train is something that hasn't been done, before or since.Eventually Popeye and company seize the car in which Chanier's junk is hidden. They replace the stash, return the car, and eventually tail Chanier to an abandoned crematorium where the switch is made. A gunfight ensues, and Popeye blasts a man in the shadows - Mulderig.In the epilogue we learn the fate of the captured hoods, none of whom get any kind of serious sentence. The unsatisfying outcome embodies the unsatisfying outcomes of so many crimes - a further testimony to this film's greatness.