The French Connection

Plot synopsis:
In December 1970 in Marseilles, France, a plainclothes policeman is observing former longshoreman turned entrepreneur Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey) chatting with some unsavory types. Charnier is being tailed by the undercover cop because he is a kingpin in smuggling heroin overseas - a fact that costs the cop his life when he later returns home and is shot in the face by Pierre Nicoli (Marcel Bozzuffi), Charnier's henchman.Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, NY, a corner Santa is chatting with some children outside a seedy bar while a hotdog vendor completes a transaction. The Santa is Detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman) and the vendor is his partner, Detective Salvatore Russo (Roy Scheider), whom Doyle nicknames "Cloudy." The two narcotics cops are staking out the bar in hope of finding a pusher named Willie (Alan Weeks). When Popeye sees Willie in the bar passing some drugs to a companion, he starts singing to the children, his signal to Cloudy. Cloudy enters the bar and grabs Willie's buddy. Willie sees the commotion and suddenly flees outside, with Popeye and Cloudy in hot pursuit. They corner him in an alley and Willie slashes Cloudy's arm with a hidden knife and runs. The cops chase him on foot to a deserted lot where he trips and falls and is beaten by both cops before Russo implores Doyle to stop. Once the two cops calm down they confusingly interrogate Willie, trying to get information on his drug connection.In France, Charnier finishes a day overseeing dock work and drives home to his seaside villa and his young trophy wife (Ann Rebbot), who obviously has expensive tastes. The two exchange gifts for their upcoming trip to the US. Charnier later meets his gunman Nicoli at a rendezvous point for an acquaintance of Charnier, TV personality Henri Devereaux (Frédéric de Pasquale). Devereaux is traveling to the US to make a film and has decided to aid Charnier's smuggling effort because he needs money. Nicoli believes involving Devereaux is a mistake, but is reassured by Charnier.In NYC, Popeye and Cloudy sign off for the night and Popeye takes his reluctant partner to a nightclub called The Chez. Popeye notices one table in particular, populated by known narcotics connections who are being entertained by a free-spending young man whom Popeye describes as a "greaser." Popeye smells a drug deal underway and persuades Cloudy to help him tail the greaser and his companion, a big-haired blonde. Throughout the night they tail the two, watching them drop off a suitcase in Little Italy and then switch cars early the next morning from an attractive coupe to a beat-up sedan. They then drive to a candy store/luncheonette, "Sal and Angie's", in a working-class area of Brooklyn. Peering inside as the couple prepares to open for the day, Popeye and Cloudy notice that the blonde is now a brunette, having worn a wig the night before.Realizing they are on to something, the two cops stake out the candy store for a week using audio surveillance. Cloudy poses as a photographer to question Angie. Combing records they find that the greaser is Salvatore "Sal" Boca (Tony Lo Bianco) and his wife is Angie (Arlene Farber). The candy store's income could not explain Sal's free-spending ways. The posh coupe is owned by Angie while the beat-up sedan is owned by Sal's brother Lou (Benny Marino), a garbageman in training at a facility on Ward's Island in the East River. All three Bocas have criminal records. The candy store is regularly visited by unsavory types from New Jersey, and Sal makes numerous trips to an expensive condo in Manhattan at which lives lawyer Joel Weinstock (Harold Gary), a known drug financier who bankrolled a heroin shipment from Mexico.Popeye and Cloudy raid a junk-house bar. One Afro-haired patron (Al Fann) talks back at Popeye and is hauled into a men's room to be beaten up - actually cover so Popeye can debrief his informant, who reveals that a big shipment is due within a few weeks that will satisfy everyone in the city. In order to make the ruse look convincing, Popeye punches his colleague in the jaw, a bit too enthusiastically.Popeye's boss, Walt Simonson (Eddie Egan, the real-life inspiration for Popeye Doyle), is reluctant to let the two cops continue with their investigation of Boca, pointedly reminding Popeye of a previous case where his hunches backfired. But with Joel Weinstock, whom the police have long wanted to arrest, potentially involved, Simonson relents and goes to court for a wiretap on Boca's house and candy store. The federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) now becomes involved and assigns Agents Bill Mulderig (Bill Hickman) and Bill Klein (Sonny Grosso, the real-life inspiration for Cloudy Russo), who've worked with Popeye before; Popeye and Mulderig are at constant loggerheads because Mulderig blames Popeye for the death of a policeman in a previous case and doesn't believe Popeye's hunches to begin with.Charnier, Nicoli, and Devereaux arrive in NYC and Devereaux brings with him Charnier's Lincoln, signed for in Charnier's stead. They speak fair English, but nonetheless have an interpreter, La Valle (Andre Ernotte), with them. La Valle escorts Charnier to a police auction of impounded cars and identifies Lou Boca as the scrap metal buyer for Charnier's business (suggesting how the Bocas may have linked up with Charnier).After several days of monitoring mundane conversations, the wiretap finally brings Popeye and Cloudy their first break - Charnier phones Sal to arrange a 12 o'clock meeting the next day. Popeye, Cloudy, and Mulderig tail Sal to midtown Manhattan, where they spot Sal meeting with Charnier and Nicoli. While Mulderig follows Sal, Popeye and Cloudy tail Charnier, dubbed "Frog One," and Nicoli as they walk through the city. The Frenchmen stop to eat at an expensive restaurant, which the cops observe while standing outside in freezing temperatures and eating bad pizza with worse coffee. Later, Popeye finds out that Frog One is staying at the Westbury Hotel, but Mulderig still doesn't believe Popeye is on to anything, leading to a brief argument.At Joel Weinstock's condo, a young dope chemist (Pat McDermott) tests a sample of Charnier's heroin and it measures to 89% pure. There are sixty kilos due to arrive; when cut down into "dime bags" it will total out to $32 million with a half-million cash down payment. Weinstock, however, wants to wait before the switch is made, much to Sal's displeasure as Sal fears that Charnier will abort the deal if Weinstock drags it out too long.The next day Popeye arrives at the Westbury just in time to see Charnier breeze right by the distracted Mulderig and Klein and walk into the city without a tail. Popeye tails Charnier himself, almost loses him at a flower shop, but then picks him up again at the Grand Central subway station. They play a cat-and-mouse game on the platform, but the wily Charnier manages to hop back on a train at the last moment and waves goodbye as the furious Popeye futilely runs after the train.Charnier meets Sal in Washington DC - Sal followed there by Klein - where Charnier insists that the deal must be consummated by the end of the week, despite Sal's protests that his mob pals want to wait. On the flight back to New York, Charnier expresses his worries to Nicoli, who points out that Sal's concern about the police is warranted. The Frenchmen agree that Doyle is the main problem, and Nicoli volunteers to assassinate Doyle. Charnier reluctantly agrees, unaware that a fight has erupted between Popeye and Mulderig, and that Popeye has been taken off the case by a furious Simonson.The dejected Popeye returns to his Brooklyn apartment building, where he is fired upon by Nicoli from the roof. Popeye manages to enter the building and pursues Nicoli to the roof, and then back down when he sees Nicoli fleeing. Nicoli runs to a nearby elevated train station and boards the train while Popeye screams for a uniformed transit policeman on board to stop him. As the train leaves the station, the transit policeman follows Nicoli as he moves forward through the train. Popeye commandeers a Pontiac Le Mans from a flabbergasted citizen. Nicoli kills the transit cop and seizes the motorman, forcing him to keep the train going through all the regular stops. Popeye furiously pursues in the car, barely escaping as other cars sideswipe him, and he nearly strikes a woman pushing her child in a baby carriage. Nicoli then kills the conductor who tries to intervene, and the crowd on the train flees while the terrified motorman collapses with a heart attack, locking the train on a collision course with a stopped train. The two trains crash and passengers, including Nicoli, are thrown about. Despite injuries and losing his gun, Nicoli slips out undetected - by everyone except Popeye. Nicoli starts down the stairs but is cornered by Popeye, and when he tries to flee he is shot dead.Popeye and Cloudy, now back on the case, tail Sal as he takes the Lincoln from a parking garage to a side street. The police stake out the car all night; at 4:10 AM a gang of thieves tries to strip it, but they are arrested by a horde of policemen and the car is towed to a garage to be searched as evidence. The mechanic (Irving Abrahams), cannot find any narcotics in the car, but Popeye refuses to believe it. While Devereaux (who signed for the car) and La Valle argue with the garage desk sergeant, Cloudy notices a 120-pound discrepancy between the car's listed weight and actual weight. The mechanic reveals one area he didn't open up - the car's rocker panels underneath the doors. Popeye chews him out and then helps open up these panels, and the stash is found. The car is replaced (either repaired or the department acquires another, intact one), the stash replaced, and it is returned to Devereaux, while the police now wait for the dealers to make their final move.Devereaux meets again with Charnier and is reluctant to do any more favors, until Charnier reveals that Devereaux is now an accomplice - to Devereaux's surprise and horror. Devereaux walks away, but Charnier takes the car himself and drives it to Ward's Island, where Lou Boca directs him to an abandoned factory building. There the heroin stash is revealed and tested positively. The stash is hidden inside the building and cash payment is hidden in the rocker panels of the junker car Lou Boca bought. With the deal completed, the Bocas briefly celebrate and Sal drives Charnier back to the city - and right into a police roadblock led by Popeye. Sal drives back to the factory with police in pursuit, and the mobsters hide inside the main building while Charnier hides in a secondary building. A gunfight ensues, in which Sal Boca is shot dead. Popeye hunts for Charnier inside the dilapidated warehouse. Cloudy joins him as Popeye appears to have cornered Charnier, but as the two cops approach the room Popeye sees someone from another door. He opens fire before Cloudy can corner the now-dead man - who turns out to be Agent Mulderig. Determined to get Frog One at any cost, and not caring that he just killed a Federal agent, Popeye strides through the warehouse, believing the Frenchman is still in hiding. After he rounds a corner a single gunshot is heard.In an epilogue, it is revealed that Weinstock and the surviving Bocas either skated or received peripheral sentences while Henri Devereaux wound up in federal prison for four years; Charnier escaped and is believed to be living in France, and Doyle and Russo were suspended from narcotics duty.(Note: The French Connection drug bust that inspired the film took place in 1961. However, the film's script sets the action at the time of actual filming, i.e. the winter of 1970-71, in order to avoid the need for period accuracy in the many New York street scenes.)

Tags: mystery, neo noir, realism, murder, dramatic, atmospheric, action, suspenseful

Review:
Look here instead for gut wrenching nihilism, frustration with the unfairness of criminal justice in the hands of bureaucracy, and a solid, plot-driven story about a couple of cops who are just trying to do their jobs as best they can.And by all means, don't watch this film if you aren't fully awake and willing to be taken down the electric, ambiguous, and compelling roads it leads to.
The film follows an aging but truculent `bad-boy' police officer Popeye Doyle and his slightly kinder partner (Roy Schneider) in their journey to bust a drug-smuggling ring of French origin.
The movie itself is basically one big chase scene, following Popeye on his cat and mouse game of catch the crook.The film has been classified as both an action and drama movie.
Modern audiences might be surprised by the lack of `action-music', but car chases and fight scenes sans pumping bass are surprisingly welcome, and help the film, as well as add an aire of classiness.Director William Friedkin is a director who knows what he wants out of a film.
The lead actors are first rate, and the script by Ernest Tidyman ('Shaft') is a good one, but Friedkin makes this something special by applying documentary film techniques to this gritty and realistic detective story.
It was the New Hollywood answer to film noir, and the lead male (Gene Hackman) is presented without glamour, the gritty city (New York) without dramatic shadows and light, and the plot (about modern drug dealing) without hyped up dramatics.
Set against the backdrop of bleak New York City streets, ill-tempered narcotics detective 'Popeye' Doyle and his partner 'Cloudy' Russo intercept a drug shipment coming in from France led by urbane master criminal Alan Charnier.
The seventies truly were the golden age of film making and they simply don't make movies like this anymore.The characters are perfectly realistic and director William Friedkin and the actors most certainly don't attempt to portray them as being heroic or 'good cops'.
Gene Hackman really in a way is an anti-hero and he seems to be born to play 'Popeye' Doyle, who by now truly has grown into a classic movie character.
The movie also won Oscar's for best director, best film editing, best picture and best writing, screenplay based on material from another medium and got nominated for three more.The movie might have a slow pace by today's standards but the wonderful story and acting really make up for this, "The French Connection" has stand the test of time well.
The slow pace even makes the famous car chase scene even more energetic and thrilling enough to make your adrenaline run.Truly in my opinion, the ultimate cop movie!10/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/.
The pressure looks like bringing success to Detectives Doyle and Russo, but Charnier's organisation has tight time targets and decides to take action to remove the heat from the job.Sometimes with "classic" films it is easy to get sucked into the hype and reputation and just love it before you have even seen it; for that reason, although I have seen it several times, I decided to give it a fresh viewing before I dared try to write my thoughts on it  it finished ten minutes ago, so my memory is still fresh.
There is no doubt though, that Hackman is the heart of the film and his performance reflects this and makes the audience emotionally involved with his story from the very start.Overall this is a great 1970's cop thriller with all that comes with that genre.
This famous movie concerns on ¨Popeye Doyle¨(Gene Hackman)an unorthodox narcotics undercover police following the Marsella French connection about a smuggling ring connected with a New York crook (Tony LoBianco).He teams up with cop Buddy Russo, ¨Cloudy¨(Roy Scheider)following the trail to hunt down the ringleader named Alain Charnier(Fernando Rey), a suave gentleman but astute baddie, and his hoodlum(Marcel Bozzuffi).In this highly rated film there are noisy action, suspense, thriller, violence and is extremely entertaining.Gene Hackman as the rebel and nonconformist Popeye is magnificent,he won a deserved Academy Award .His nemesis, Fernando Rey as the drug smuggler, plays perfectly his role as the cunning and elegant villain.
This is a great film, professionally directed by William Friedkin and so is its sequel ¨French connection II ¨ by John Frankenheimer and again with Gene Hackman and Fernando Rey. Rating : Above average and well worth seeing but is an authentic classic movie..
Name every cop show or detective movie and they all have the same type of story That's the main fault of THE FRENCH CONNECTION - it's let far too many genies out of too many bottles , it's been imitated ( Usually in a far inferior manner ) a myriad of times that it seems almost run of the mill now .
Later on in a scene that rivals the car chase in Bullitt, Hackman commandeers a car and chases down one of the gang who holds a subway hostage, I think it's the Sea Beach train a stop or two from Coney Island if memory serves.The French Connection is based on a book written Green Berets author Robin Moore as told to him by Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso, the cops who did the actual bust.
But this scene ends up being much more laughable than exciting.Gene Hackman does pretty well in his role as obsessive, abrasive, bigoted cop Popeye Doyle who you get the sense is always a moment away from completely losing his mind.
In this movies, the two main cops (Hackman and Scheider) are crude, profane low-life people and the rest of the characters are French or American drug dealers.
I did find the surveillance work of "Popeye Doyle" (Hackman) and "Buddy Russo" (Scheider) interesting to watch and famous car chase scene is nothing spectacular nowadays.
'The French Connection' is at its best when its palpably gritty city street setting swallows its two hard-boiled, brutish but brilliantly brass-balled heroes and churns them out as almost nothing more than another piece of superb set-dressing, simply adding to the sensationally stained sense of time and place so very vital to the success of the punchy piece; its car-chase sequence is a real stand- out too, not only within the genre but also the whole medium, thanks to the devastatingly dangerous feel afforded simply because it was shot straight-up for real, every bump, scrape and oh-so-close call just seconds away from ending not only the careers of every member of the cast and crew but also Gene Hackman's and several city- slickers' very lives, and while this reckless abandon cannot be advised or even condoned, it certainly adds to the utter determination and desperation of one of the most no-holds-barred, brash and brutally honest action scenes of the seventies, but its actually this film's quieter moments that strike me the most, Roy Schneider slowly stalking someone from behind a broadsheet or tenuously tailing the last in a long line of fruitless endeavors, as they somehow manage to keep me riveted despite their lack of action and show an ironically interesting side of a slow-burning and sometimes boring job, a side seldom seen in cinema.
I'll discuss it more later on in this review.This Oscar-winning film takes us onto the streets of New York City following two detectives, Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle (Gene Hackman) and his partner, Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider).
Quebec Rating:13+ Canadian Home Video Rating:R(should be 18A)I saw The French Connection a few days ago and I must say, I was disappointed.Everybody says this is an excellent movie.It won Best Picture of 1971 at the Academy Awards.It beat Clockwork Orange which in my opinion is a far superior film.The acting is good,the storyline is alright and the soundtrack is pretty cool but I found the film to be a bit slow and boring.Gene Hackman plays a good role.The car chase scene that everybody talks about is pretty overrated and not that good.Overall, The French Connection is an overrated and very mediocre movie..
But please, Dirty Harry was a far more interesting, well written, directed, character driven movie- an action film, sure, but one that shows how a normal cop can turn into an obsessive wreck over one criminal.
The documentary style cinematography (by Owen Roizman) is thoroughly absorbing and particularly effective during Popeye Doyle's (Gene Hackman in the best performance of his career in my opinion) interrogation of a suspect near the beginning of the film (featuring the famous "Do you pick your feet in Poughkeepsie?" line).
None of the characters are particularly likable, but that doesn't matter, what matters is getting those bad guys.Very much an Oscar-worthy performance from Gene Hackman as Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle, ably supported by Roy Scheider as Det. Buddy Russo.
Whether it was the best movie of the year is up for debate, but that does not mean The French Connection is a bad film.
There were other films, mostly in Europe, that were making movies like this, but there is also this implicit urgency that Friedkin is conveying here as well; it's gritty, sometimes in the action there's so many chances of spontaneity that it can practically do no harm.But without going into detail about the specifics of the good in the style, one only has to look at the strengths in the story.
Granted, Kubrick's work is not very widely palatable and the Academy Awards have long since been a ceremony aimed at rewarding popularity rather than artistic quality (this curious little factoid was proven in spectacular fashion in 1997), but I find it hard to believe that even at the time, when sex and violence were probably not nearly as accepted as they are today, The French Connection could have come in above A Clockwork Orange.In the movie's defense, It is finely crafted and original, setting up what was to become a hugely copied setup of crime movies featuring a detective who is so dedicated to his assignments and determined to catch the bad guy that he/she has to go outside the agency and solve the crime alone, since some rules have to be broken.
Gene Hackman's character is famously the one that is `Bad news, but a good cop.' I think that the movie's biggest problem today is that it is famous for having the greatest car chase ever put on film.
Sure, the scene where Doyle (Hackman) was chasing the bad guy in the subway train was expertly crafted if short and unspectacular, and not the greatest car chase ever put on film b any stretch of the imagination.
VERY good), the chase itself is not.The story is simple enough, Doyle is a detective frantically trying to topple a drug ring importing drugs from France, and the movie follows this plot in a simple and relatively realistic fashion, which I think is the film's greatest strength.
Although it was the best picture winner at the 1972 Oscars, successfully yet tragically fending off Stanley Kubrick's 'A Clockwork Orange', 'The French Connection' is nothing more than a slow, nasty looking, overly deliberate piece of 'gritty' film-making that misses the target by a long, long way.Although these things that are bad and that are going for it the whole time, there are also a few other basic things that I really couldn't believe had been included.
The film "French Connection" won best picture in 1971, as well as best director, William Friedkin, and of course, best actor, Gene Hackman!!
The surveillance is portrayed rather well, and it does lead to a gradual but deliberate buildup of the story, which revolves around a major shipment of drugs coming into New York City from France, and the efforts of a couple of NYPD detectives to stop it.Gene Hackman won an Oscar as Best Lead Actor for his portrayal of Det. Popeye Doyle - and he was deserving.
And its important that none of these complaints either account for, or show interest in, the fact that the core of the narrative is that of an actual narcotics investigation of the middle '60s.Finally, most of those who give the film a bad review utterly ignore the personality issue - the film is, to some extent, a character study of a street-smart cop who has no life and who has become too obsessed with his job to get it done properly - the American mobsters get busted but the 'French connection' himself gets away.These issues also have political ramifications.
In the end, it is hard know just why THE FRENCH CONNECTION exists.Gene Hackman, in his Oscar-winning role, gets to sneer and snort and rant and rave, though by the end, his Popeye Doyle seems to be about as poor of a cop as he is a driver.
The French Connection (1971) is an Action/Crime/Drama/Thriller movie about 2 cops in the Narcotics Bureau of New York City.
Then there are the great genre films, which work within their genre confines while expanding the boundaries for genre films to come.Such is the police procedural "The French Connection."The streets of New York City have been bone-dry of heroin for some time, but vice detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman) has his eye out for a big score.
Popeye.....Does Things....His Way. Gene Hackman, a narcs cop called "Popeye Doyle" won an Academy Award for his brilliant performance...(he appears more scary than the crooks he is after.) It is a 1971 film, and that is one of the many reasons it is great (the 70s was THE golden era for great movies).
This is the case of a film that wasn't ill-received on release -- it won four Oscars (including Best Actor and Best Picture) and pretty much solidified his career.He had, up till this point, been known for his smaller roles in films like "Bonnie and Clyde" - this one proved he could really act and carry a film on his own.It's a story about a racist police officer (Hackman) on the tail of a French drug cartel importing into the States.This movie is not an easy ride and it has a rather depressing aura, but it's still a very good picture - one of the best of the decade, which is saying quite a lot.Hackman is perfect as Popeye Doyle.
Film Review: "The French Connection" (1971)Winning "Best Picture" on April 10th 1972 over highly-provocative, in some circles favored, "A Clockwork Orange" produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) toward an overly-fortunate, due to 40 time multiplying production budget at the U.S. domestic box office alone, producer Philip D'Antoni and the righteous award for "Best Director" toward 36-year-old uprising free-creative William Friedkin in order to deliver his world-wide-audience shocking novel-adaptated screen version of "The Exorcist" (1973) two years later, when this New York City cop-drama meets suspense-beats-of-excellence delivers at that time of conception new-age action-thrills due to relentless-chasing camera operations ingnited by cinematographer Owen Roizman, pushing hands-on action beats to live-performances by a deadly triangle two cops on one criminal on foot, in cars and trains, portrayed in haunting fashions by Academy-Award-winning Gene Hackman, at age 40, in best form to maximized worldview despair of an overly-clever drug-trafficking Fernando Rey (1917-1994), when Roy Scheider (1932-2008) as also-Oscar-nominated supporting character Buddy Russo brings moral stability in an early received action-thriller motion picture for any generation to indulge on, shot on gritty urban New York State locations on constant running 35mm "technicolor" -timed film-stock finished with a 100-Minute-Cut deliverance of a young filmmaker, who like no others made the most of talented cast and independent budget given to him in comparable Academy-Award "Best Picture" wins in eighty-nine years of Oscar-history since its first reception on May 16th 1929.© 2018 Felix Alexander Dausend
The French Connection remains perhaps the very best police drama ever made, combining a strong storyline with audacious direction from William Friedkin, superior performances from the large cast, and the most audacious car-chase ever filmed.The contrast between the main pursuer (Gene Hackman's Popeye Doyle) and the pursued (Fernando Rey's Alain Chanier) is the film's primary theme.
To me, this is simply Gene Hackman's greatest performance and it is too bad there are not as many cops today out there like Popeye Doyle..
As Det.Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle, Gene Hackman, chases down assassin Pierre Nicoli, Marcel Bozzuffi, under the Brooklyn El-train that is as heart thumping now as it was some thirty years ago.True story of "The French Connection" heroin shipment that was busted in New York by two determined police officers who came on to it by accident, and followed it through to the end.
The acting and direction is so good that its almost as effective, like the cat and mouse game between Popeye and the top drug smuggler Charnier (Fernando Rey) at the 42nd St. subway shuttle, as the incredible car vrs train chase scene that came much later in the movie.The best thing about the French Connection" if anything in the movie could top what we saw up to that point is that the ending didn't cop-out but left the viewers thinking that there are no happy endings when it comes to the never ending saga of cops and robbers, or in this case drug dealers.
The French Connection blurred the line, and set a standard for police drama that influenced a generation of imitators that has lasted until this very day with whatever latest incarnation of Law & Order.Gene Hackman (who had mostly been a second banana until this film) plays Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle, an otherwise good cop who's relentless pursuit of the bad guys inevitably ends in disaster.
For a movie with great car chases, check out Ronin.Like most things that came out of the 1970s, The French Connection sucked..
There was a real French Connection, an actual car chase, a real set of rocker panels.But that's why it's so much fun and that's why this is one of the best cop movies of all time.