Delayed Reaction: The French Connection

The Pitch: It's time that someone made a "respectable" cops and crooks movie.

Two cops try to take down a French heroin operation.

Gene Hackman hasn't worked in 14 years, since he made 2004's Welcome to Mooseport. You know, that comedy classic with Ray Ramano. It doesn't feel like it's been that long. I've seen so much of his filmography, especially from the 90s on, that he still feels vital. He's good in just about everything and picked an eclectic assortment of movies tp be in. I even love him in Heartbreakers (a movie I have an unearned affection for). While going back through the highlights of his filmography, I of course loved him in Hoosiers. The Conversation is sneakily one of my favorite films from the 70s. The French Connection was the big hole in his filmography for me. Hackman is so inescapably himself, that everything he's in could be described as "the perfect role for him". All his roles are made in his image. Jimmy Doyle is perhaps "peak Hackman". He's gruff. He's dogged. He's not concerned about looking good. He has a job to do and he isn't going to let anyone or anything stop him. This isn't his most nuanced work (I'd point back to The Conversation for that), but I'm not sure he's commanded the screen better. I mean, Gene Hackman is an action movie star - driving the action. I haven't associated him with that before. Maybe the adversary or the commanding officer, but not the star.

At times, I really loved The French Connection. At other points, I was distracted by how sloppy it is. The famous chase scene (Hackman in a car chasing a train) is famous for a reason. It's tense and fast and exciting. The ending is iconic. That alone made the movie worth it. I also love the game-like nature of Doyle tailing Charnier, concluding with the dance, getting on and off the subway. I'm a big fan of seeing the process behind things, so something like the scenes taking apart and searching the car for the heroin really worked for me.

Watching this nearly 50 years later, some bad things jump out at me too. I mean, the iconic shot of the movie is a cop shooting a guy in the back. That's a bad look. It kind of fits Doyle's character though. I'm perplexed by how the bad guys get away in the end. The cops have the car with the heroin, give it back, but don't have a plan to get it back. How the hell does that happen? I mostly enjoyed the hell out of this movie, but there was a distracting amount of sloppy police work. My Law & Order-saturated mind can't deal with it. Still, that car chase was pretty cool.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend