When it comes to cop movies, you can't ignore the legendary The French Connection. Released in 1971, it set a new standard of on-the-street crime drama and reworked familiar cliches into something more dynamic and exciting than its contemporaries. Its tense action sequences would later become known as the film's signature.
It's also one of the most famous car chases in cinema history - and yet it feels more like a silent movie than any modern blockbuster. The climactic scuffle between Popeye Doyle and an assassin in an elevated train has been immortalised for all time, but it's not merely Friedkin's peerless technique that accounts for its success.
The French Connection, written by Ernest Tidyman based on the book of the same name by Robin Moore, stars Gene Hackman as Detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle and Roy Scheider as Buddy “Cloudy” Russo, NYPD narcotics detectives on the hunt for wealthy French heroin smuggler Alain Charnier (played by Fernando Rey). It's not only one of the most iconic cop movies of all time, but an essential work in American culture at large, establishing a new ethos for policemen on screen.
Using a surveillance state aesthetic to create claustrophobic stake-outs and stealthy shadowing, the French Connection changed the way law enforcement was depicted on film forever. It made chasing a subway or an errant pedestrian into an adrenaline rush that felt as if it might actually happen.
In other words, it was the first film to really hook the public on Hollywood's war on drugs by reimagining law enforcement in a realistically gritty light. And, as such, it's perhaps the most influential of all the narcotics thrillers.
If you've never seen it, I suggest you do. It's a great film and it deserves to be seen by everyone.
It’s also a very entertaining watch. The french connection attack The performances are superb, especially those from Hackman and Scheider. But what makes it even more compelling is the story itself.
The French Connection is a fictionalized version of a true story about how narcotics detectives Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso solved a drug case in the 1960s that involved dozens of New York City police officers and members of the FBI. And, although it's a movie that you might think is about cops being bad or evil, the truth is it's a movie about two very good guys doing a very difficult job for very long periods of time, and then being completely outclassed by their adversaries.
I don't think you could say that about any other movie. The characters in it are genuinely unlikable, but their characterisations make them sympathetic enough to get a laugh or two from the audience, and the film has a lot of heart and is incredibly well shot.
The French Connection is a very successful movie, but it's also a very frustrating one. There are things about it that don't feel right to me, and I can't quite figure out what they are. But one thing that does feel wrong to me is how it treats people of color and lower income groups in this film, and I don't think that's a very fair representation of the real world.
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