French Connection
The police procedural drama had long since been a staple of both TV and movies as usually seen in shows like Dragnet where the cops would wearily interrogate suspects until finally figuring everything out that was needed to wrap up the case. The concept of the action movie (as we know it today) was literally unheard of until the late 60’s Steve McQueen film Bullitt which featured as its centerpiece an amazing chase scene for its time between the main character and some random hitmen who might as well have been anonymous, but otherwise it suffered from a very weak story and was primarily carried by McQueen and his iconic presence. Come 1971, the decision was made to once again try out another cop movie spiced up with some action (including another chase scene) but this time with a compelling storyline based upon real events that had occurred in New York City in the early 1960s, when NYPD narcotics detectives Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso made a majorly huge heroin bust where the junk in question was said to have been brought over directly by connections in the French narcotics underworld, resulting in several arrests and lots of headlines leading to a book and then this movie, which was put under the then untested directorial hands of William Friedkin (who would win the Best Director Oscar that year for this) and really cranked things into overdrive for both the fledgling action genre as well as such concepts as the cop buddy movie and the drug smuggling potboilers of later years. The funny thing about Egan himself though was that he was said to be an absolute bulldog of a bastard when he was on duty, known to merely bust the balls of his fellow cops and then be a absolute son of a bitch when dealing with criminals, always suspecting everyone in the room to be guilty of something whenever he was around them. The decision to cast Gene Hackman (in his first Oscar win here, for Best Actor) in the role (here renamed Jimmy Doyle) was a brilliant one, especially when it turned out that the writers and Hackman were completely unafraid to portray the character as being unlikable, obstinate, and even racist, all qualities that later action heroes (particularly ones that were cops) would eschew in their respective quests to become the next kid’s action figure, but Hackman’s peerless ambition in not to be playing a guy that everybody would like came from his actual riding around with Egan himself while on patrol duty and witnessing what cops in the big city actually put up with on a daily basis (which he was reportedly disgusted by) even as he openly admitted beforehand to having had an anticop, antiestablishment mindset before going in front of the camera and playing one of the downright meanest (and realistic) law enforcement agents ever put to film and yet still doing it under the guise of being the good guy (or at least as an antihero). The film begins in the south of France where a hapless French police officer is tailing the French Drug Kingpin (Fernando Rey) who is referred to as “Frog One” for most of the movie, before being easily spotted and brutally gunned down by his henchman (Marcel Bozzuffi). The film then cuts to the mean streets of New York City where Hackman’s Doyle is dressed in a Santa Claus outfit and along with his partner (Roy Scheider) running an undercover bust. Over the course of doing their day to day jobs as cops, they manage to ascertain that not only is there a major dry spell of heroin on the streets, but also that a major shipment is due to come in any day now that will help all of the junkies in New York become “well”, not to mention that the potential distributers are guaranteed to make a fortune with it being that they are the only ones in business with the continuing shortage going on. As more pieces of the deal come together, it turns out that Frog One is brilliantly using the cover of a famous fuckface French TV star (Frederic De Pasquale) to bring the product into the country given the free rein that this celebrity has whenever he travels anywhere (and he can also make a rather handy scapegoat to throw underneath the bus if need be) along with having as his American go between a low level mafia hood (Tony Lo Bianco) who’s looking to move up in the ranks with his mob masters if all goes according to plan here. Hackman and Scheider are already onto all of the major players, watching them, following them, and doing wiretap surveillance on all of their phones even as Frog One (who is only there to get the deal done as quickly as possible and then get out of the country before being detected) still has the best instincts imaginable to identify and elude pursuers such as Hackman while Hackman himself utilizes his own instincts and hunches to keep Scheider and his other fellow cops still squarely in the game. After spending the first half setting up all of the major players, Friedkin then switches into a more adrenaline loaded, faster paced second half, featuring of course the aforementioned chase scene that many believe really did top the one in Bullitt, with Hackman wildly pursuing a killer by car from underneath a subway overpass where his prey is riding on a car up there desperately trying to get away, even killing a couple of civilians on board in the process (including what looks to be a uniformed soldier trying to play a hero). A big part of what still makes the film so appealing is that along with Hackman’s fearless, warts and all performance, his Doyle and the other cops on the case are portrayed as almost being like working class types when it comes to their job, as shown by the dingy apartment Doyle lives in along with the scene when he’s standing across the street out in the cold, watching Frog One enjoying a lush, extravagant meal with his henchman while he’s stuck having to make do with a slice of pizza and a cup of coffee (which he spits out) brought to him by Scheider along with the unimaginably grueling number of hours spent sitting out in their car at various places waiting for something, ANYTHING to happen when usually nothing does, thus emphasizing the idea that sleep deprivation and a never ending tendency to have to stand watch until they get their big break are all just part of the job of being a cop. Ironically, Egan himself (who quit police work right before the movie was made and started his own career as an actor) actually appears here as the commanding officer to Hackman and Scheider and comes across pretty decently as an actor. It all leads up to a big final shootout (which would not be all that uncommon in later films like this) with the big “twist” so to speak being perfectly in line with the Doyle character, a relentless bastard whose mindset is so immersed with that of the hunt that nothing else (including the welfare of others) even matters to him, and the fact that Friedkin dares to end the whole thing on a rather ambiguous note is in many ways the film’s biggest weakness, choosing not to neatly wrap up the story in a nice little bow but to rather show that Doyle will forever be on the prowl as he continues hunting down all of the bad people in the world, whether it be Frog One or the next major criminal that he can set his sights on as the movie almost seems to question sometimes whether even cops themselves can (or should) be THAT much into doing their jobs as he obviously is. Nonetheless, there’s a lot to savor here, including witnessing the evolution of a genre of filmmaking that would offer a lot more for fans in the years to come, even as it is coupled with the irony of having a lead character whom after the literally hundreds of shootouts and car chases we’ve seen in movies ever since, still stands out to this day as being somewhat unique to films of this kind although still being far more realistic in his depiction as well, an action hero who is a little too intent on catching the bad guy to the point of disregard towards others and whom also carries most of the obvious flaws that we all do when finding ourselves in such a stressful line of work…
8/10