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There's a paradox at the heart of The French Connection's completely deserved reputation as a classic. That is, the 1971 movie directed by William Friedkin and starring Gene Hackman is so influential that the contemporary cop action movie is inconceivable without it. And on the other hand, the film doesn't play or feel at all like any cop/action movie being made today.
Yes, those are footcuffs on Mean Gene's dogs.
The movie's plot is pretty simple: across the Atlantic, in the South of France, there's a super-suave Eurodude (Fernando Rey) with a lethal, taciturn henchman (Marcel Bozzufi) who wants to unload a shitload of heroin in the U.S. His scheme will run afoul of super-scrappy New York detectives Popeye Doyle (Hackman) and Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider). The two cops are based on real-life detectives Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso (both of whom appear in the film), and they're real beauts. Popeye's the crazy one: foul-mouthed, bigoted, quick-tempered, and just kinda sleazy overall (the movie provides an incidental view of his love life, such as it is, and it'll skeeve you out just as much if not more than his casual use of racial epithets will). But also incorruptible, indefatigable, and with a killer instinct for a case: Popeye and his partner stumble upon the massive drug deal basically because a guy they decide to tail one night for kicks turns out to be the big-time wannabe who's orchestrating things for the Frenchman. As for Sonny, he's lower-key, but just as stubborn and maybe twice as tough. Hard to say.
So after establishing the characters, Connection chronicles Popeye and Sonny tracking the bad guys, chasing the bad guys, trying to find the drugs, and bringing all (or most) of the dope peddlers to justice. The movie is of course hugely famous for its centerpiece car chase, or, rather, its car-and-train chase. On the run from Doyle, the French henchman commandeers an elevated train, and crazy Popeye commandeers a civilian's car, and off they go. The scene is notable not just for the heart-in-your-mouth quality of the action (the way Doyle just misses that baby carriage is never not terrifying) but also for just how lunatic the characters involved are for enacting it in the first place. Director Friedkin had roots in the documentary film, hence an obsession with gritty realism; but he also had a super-hyper sense of cinematic dynamism and a diabolical grasp of how snappy editing could punch up a scene. Both these qualities are what make the chase scene so memorable.
And Friedkin's doc tendencies are also what make the movie so odd and one-of-a-kind. This is movie that seemingly spends reels of film just observing Popeye and Sonny doing a very unglamorous job. When they're tailing the criminals, it's an endless, slow chain of what seems like stale cigarettes and stale coffee, standing out in the cold while the bad guys eat at fancy French restaurants. Today's cop pictures almost never spend so much non-quality time, such as it is, with their characters.
This movie, now in its middle age, is the one that made Gene Hackman a star—and late bloomer Hackman, while a respected character actor at the time, was just rounding the bend of 40 when the film was made! (The now-venerated, and now-retired Hackman turns 85 this weekend: Happy Birthday, Gene!) According to director Friedkin, Hackman, then shy and insecure, disliked his character so much that he would become visibly upset were anyone to tell him he was doing a great job playing him. The movie would win Hackman his first of two Academy Awards, for Best Actor. (His second, for Best Supporting Actor, would be for his work as a very bad lawman in Clint Eastwood's 1992 Unforgiven.) Connection practically swept the 44th Academy Awards, also winning Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay (by Ernest Tidyman) and Best Editing (Gerald B. Greenberg). Seen today, the movie sure doesn't come off as anybody's idea of Oscar bait. But is sure still kicks butt.
[Watch The French Connection on Netflix]
THE DESCENDENTS OF THE FRENCH CONNECTION
LETHAL WEAPON: Popeye and Sonny did not invent "good cop/bad cop," but they certainly made it tougher, nastier, and yes, in some scenes funnier than it had been in prior cop movies. The lunatic dynamic was adapted by Mel Gibson and Danny Glover playing stressed-out partners in warmer terrains of L.A. and worked hard in all four installments of the franchise from 1987 to 1998. [Where to stream Lethal Weapon]
THE DARK KNIGHT: The Christopher Nolan Batman movies relied on future-noir like Blade Runner, and the comics themselves, to inspire their stylings of sinister Gotham City. But the wild chases The Joker leads the Batman on throughout the 2008 installment of the Dark Knight trilogy have an almost-literally breakneck velocity that was pioneered by Friedkin's film. See also 1998's Ronin and Friedkin's own (great) 1985 To Live And Die In L.A. for chases that try to one-up Connection's. [Where to stream The Dark Knight]
THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS: Hackman plays a very disagreeable character on the other side of Popeye Doyle' social spectrum in one of his last great roles. As the monstrously egotistical patriarch of a "genius" family in Wes Anderson's imaginative comedy, the glibly high-toned Hackman is both as ferocious and as funny as the rough cop of Connection. [Where to stream The Royal Tenenbaums]
Veteran (that is, old-ish) critic Glenn Kenny has written for oodles of publications and these days reviews new releases at RogerEbert.com. He blogs at Some Came Running and tweets (mostly in jest) at @glenn__kenny.
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