The French Connection - A Review

 

The French Connection was the film that started a new wave of tough, gritty crime films. Released in 1971, it became an instant classic. Its depiction of the world's largest drug bust helped it win five Oscars, including Best Picture. It was a huge success for director William Friedkin, who was just 32 at the time, and for Gene Hackman, who made the role of the hardened detective Popeye Doyle his first major feature.

The movie is an engrossing character study that's never short of suspense or action, thanks to the intense direction and a script by Ernest Tidyman (expert writer on thrillers and action movies). While some may blanch at the frequent use of the f-word or a general sense of grimness, the film offers a deeply immersive vision of a decaying New York.

There's an element of surrealism in the way that the film presents a city that feels so much like a surveillance state, a city where it's clear that a lot of the people on the street aren't extras. And this is part of the reason that I think this film still has such a great reputation, that it's so unusual and so well-made in its simplicity, in not trying to linger on social and aesthetic complexities or presumptions, while simultaneously concisely evoking them.

It's a very effective way of creating an The french connection ep  immersive experience in this very rough and tumble world. It's very similar to the sort of thing that Scorsese had done in Mean Streets and Taxi Driver with his realistic vision of New York, a place where you can see men lying down on the sidewalks, or the filthy subway tunnels where it's clearly clear the crowd isn't an extra.

One of the things that's really interesting about this is the fact that the police characters are brutalizing people who have no idea what's going on. That's really frightening and it's also just a real good cynical way of making people think that these guys are probably not good guys, that they could kill them for sure.

The French Connection is a great movie, it's really a masterpiece of American cinema. The actors are wonderful, and the screenplay is a good example of how a movie can be written with a strong sense of action and realism.

It was a very interesting character study of how drugs were made in this period, and the film does not shy away from smuggling. There's as much detail about how the heroin is smuggled as there is about the policing.

Another good point about the movie is the way it treats its protagonists. In particular, the main character "Popeye Doyle" is not just charismatic but he's also right. His strong feeling that there is a foreign smuggling operation going on is a proof of his competence and instinct.

In terms of his characterization, it's a very important aspect to this film, as it shows how much this actor was capable of, and how he has the instinct to know when something isn't right. This is why it's so important that he is not only a very good cop but also a good person.