One of my personal goals along the way as I blog about these films is to make sure I at least devote 1000 words to each one just to make sure I am giving plenty of analysis and commentary as well as to try and cover all the bases. In the case of “The French Connection” you have no idea how badly I just want to type the word “shit” one-thousand times and be done with it.
Whenever I mentioned to somebody that I was going to be watching this movie, their response was always “ooh, car chase scene.” I am positive this is the case because the car chase scene was the most interesting part of the movie. And I am pretty convinced that this scene is actually not even all that exciting, it’s just that the rest of the movie is so slow and terrible that this scene seems very thrilling by comparison.
Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider play Popeye Doyle and Cloudy Russo, a pair of bumbling New York narcotics officers who are obsessively trying to track down the go-to-guy between drug pushers in Brooklyn and a mysterious source in the French port city of Marseilles. Part of their obsession can be traced back to the discovery that Doyle and Russo haven’t had a significant drug bust in years. In addition, every time they act on one of their ill-fated “hunches” the suspect turns out to be perfectly clean.
”You put a shiv in my partner. You know what that means? God dammit! All winter long I gotta listen to him gripe about his bowling scores!” (Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle, “The French Connection)
Their iffy-at-best detective work turns up a world of shady Italian fronts, wealthy Jewish drug dealers and some African American pill-poppers. Essentially every ethnicity is depicted as having some hand in the drug trade- and Popeye never misses an opportunity to point out his distaste for pretty much all ethnic groups.
I know the depictions of New York City ghettos are meant to serve as a “gritty” backdrop for this film, but it winds up being too repetitive a theme as there are several minutes in several different scenes of foot pursuits from slum to slum. With New York, there are endless possibilities that could make a police cat-and-mouse type movie interesting, ferries, crowded streets in shopping districts, traffic-jams, skyscrapers and elevators- but no, save one scene where Popeye loses a suspect on a subway, the pursuits all take place in grungy, deserted backstreets.
After screw up after screw up Doyle and Russo are taken off the case to find the French Connection (I just love it when a movie title makes sense ;)) and a dejected Doyle goes back to his now oft-depicted drunken haze. When a sniper who is as bad at sniping as Doyle is at life botches a hit on Popeye, the big dramatic chase scene begins.
There are so many things wrong with the vastly overrated car chase that I don’t even know where to begin. The French assassin hijacks a rapid transit train while Doyle hijacks a civilian’s car in order to chase the train from below. Not only is a car vs. train chase absolutely pointless, but it is completely unbelievable. The notion that Doyle would be able to find a lengthy stretch of traffic where he could pursue an elevated train is laughable- no bridges or waterways? Construction zones or dead-ends? If the commuter train just follows the flow of traffic why have it? Not to mention the fact that there is only a minimal level of swerving involved for Popeye to keep up with the train for the entire length of the chase. I don’t know when New York streets were so abandoned but I guess I am expected to believe that New York didn’t become heavily populated til sometime in the 1980’s. The chase scene culminates with Doyle killing the would-be assassin- again, in a completely isolated and empty part of the city.
Now, maybe I just misunderstood this part of the movie or maybe my amateur police knowledge isn’t what I thought it was, but I can’t piece together why Doyle and Russo subsequently get assigned to staking out the car that is suspected to be the mule car despite having been removed from the case. At first I assumed it was because they were playing Renegade Cop and doing the opposite of what they were supposed to, however, as soon as they decide to move in and confiscate it they have a whole barrage of police at their disposal.
While the car is being searched Doyle shows us the first indicator that he might actually be a competent officer by discovering the entire stash in the car’s rocker panel, despite having been told by the NYPD’s Main Guy Who Takes Apart Cars Looking For Drugs (I am not going to be so self-righteous that I am going to pretend to know the actual name of the position, or google it and make it look like I knew all along what I was talking about) that the car was as clean as it was the day it came off the assembly line. Almost like that, Doyle has immediate access to an entire SWAT team as he sets up a blockade to trap the now identified go-between Henri Devereaux immediately after the deal goes down. A shootout ensues in, you guessed it, another abandoned neighborhood. Apparently Doyle and Company are as good with guns as they are general police work, because the entire crew not only lives, but manages to walk away with little-to-no jail time, as we learn via copout epilogue.
As I have said in numerous blogs before, the best kind of protagonist is the kind who is flawed, but shows signs of good. Popeye Doyle has absolutely no redeeming qualities thus making it very hard for you to pull for the guy at any point in this movie. He is a racist, a drunk and completely inept at his job, which is the kind you definitely SHOULDN’T be inept at. Also, they don’t explore this fully, but I think he has some kind of creepy shoe fetish that isn’t discussed. When Russo comes to his apartment he sees Doyle has several pairs of women’s footwear on his floor, and in a later scene, Popeye is completely unaware of the world around him as he looks at the trashy boots of a woman he sees while on patrol. I know this kind of subtle indication is usually used to help us get into the mind of the person in question, but in this case I’m glad it wasn’t explored further. Whether or not Popeye is a pervert or a cross-dresser, I could care less.
I don’t want to be so general as to say that “The French Connection” was boring, but immediately upon conclusion of the film I understood what it must feel like to be the victim of some type of sadistic and inhuman torture, as once I realized the movie was over, I felt like I had just outlived every kind of punishment that can be inflicted on a person. This movie insults my intelligence, bores me almost literally to tears and steals time away from me that I can now never get back unless I make significant lifestyle changes.
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