Customer Reviews
Excellent Gritty Crime Thriller - By: D. Lodge, 23 Feb 2008 
Gene Hackman & Roy Scheider in early 70's New York City. Dirty, dangerous & gritty NYC. They are narcotic cops after the drug lords who import heroin into NYC via France. The methods & language used by these cops is far from PC but they get the job done!
Oh & it includes one of THE great car chase sequences. What's great about the car chase is that it's just long enough - not a second is wasted.
Much of this film set the way for other such crime films/TV shows & pretty much the standard for car chases in films.
A strong 7/10.
Extremely overrated! - By: James McGovern, 15 Feb 2008 
I'm sorry to have to criticise a famous "classic" film, but this reallly is not the action packed thriller it should be. Like a lot of well known films, it receives praise for no real reason other than the fact that it is already famous & therefore simply must be good - in the minds of the gullible anyway. With the exception of the one excellent scene in which Hackman is attempting to follow a train by driving recklessly in a car, the ENTIRE rest of the film has no action whatsoever, & no interesting twists or subplots. It might be better than a lot of mainstream trash but it is still unacceptably poor & immensely boring for such a renowned film. Avoid boring yourself with this, unless you are an obsessive fan of the genre.
Classic 70's film made in same time as the Godfather movies - By: Jay, 24 Jun 2007 These 2 films have a close paralllel to the two Godfather films made in the same time. If Godfather I & II made superstars out of Pacino, De Niro & Robert Duvalll; French Connection on the other hand propelled Gene Hackman into the big league.
The 70's rarely pulled punches when it came to top billed cop movies, starting with Dirty Harry, the original French Connection & snowballling into classics like Serpico, French Connection II is no exception. This movie won't disappoint any fan of either the original, or anyone that wanted to see for themselves Gene Hackman carrying a lead action role almost through the screen.Gene Hackman as Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle & Roy Scheider as Buddy 'Cloudy' Russo are great as the two detectives chasing & following a couple of people including Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey) & Salvatore Boca (Tony Lo Bianco)
Hackman plays Popeye Doyle as if it were him reallly. Every emotion doesn't seem to be acted;it seems real !
"The sonofabitch is here. I saw him. I'm gonna get him ..." - By: MarmiteMan, 26 Mar 2006 
Based on Robin Moore's novel recounting a true story of drug-trafficking in the early-60s (the then-largest-ever narcotics haul in 1962), William Friedkin's Oscar-winning film brought to the American public an hitherto unseen dark & seedy view of their cities (filmed on-location in New York's Lower East Side, Times Square, Bedford-Stuyvesant, & Grand Central Station, amongst others), where ne'er-do-wells lurk in the shadows of shop-fronts & side allleys, awaiting nightfalll & their raison d'être: to do what cannot be seen in daylight ... It proved quite a shock. Later films like MEAN STREETS & SERPICO also brought the seamier side of metropolitan life to the fore - they, too, made for unpleasant viewing. But the critics hailed such innovation in the otherwise glossy Hollywood output.
As Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle, Gene Hackman's bruising portrayal of real-life idiosyncratic Harlem special Narcotics Bureau officer Eddie Egan deservedly won him an Oscar - unfortunately overshadowing his partner in the film Buddy 'Cloudy' Russo's (Roy Scheider) less evident contribution to Ernest Tidyman's crackling script. Both Egan & Grosso had smalll starring rôles in the film (Egan as Lieutenant Walter Simonson, Grosso as Klein), as well as served as technical advisors. By most accounts, Eddie Egan was not a likeable person: an unsympathetic, tireless, vulgar & brutal man, obsessively wedded to his career which was itself engaged in off-the-main-street detective work [he died recently, 2006]. In an attempt to portray Egan's character as accurately as possible, Hackman spent several weeks 'up close & personal' with Egan, getting under his skin. And get under the latter's skin Hackman did, as was attested by Egan's irritation & near-violent outbursts. But Hackman obviously did his research well, did he not ...?!! Apparently, the NYPD was so angered by the film's depiction of it that it punished Egan by firing him just hours before he signed his retirement papers.
Otherwise the film is a pretty straightforward cop thriller ... but with exciting set pieces. The scenes of Hackman's car-train chase under the elevated-railway in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, in pursuit of calllous hitman 'Frog Two' Pierre Nicoli are extremely tense because ... they were genuine. Producer Phillip d'Antoni wanted something 'extra' over the chase scenes in his earlier Bullitt (1968). The New York City authorities were not contacted for permission to film the scenes there, nor was the NYPD involved in stewarding traffic. Hackman committed several moving violations with a camera plonked on the dashboard in front of him - the looks of horror & fear on his face at the near-misses (eg. the mother with a baby in the pram) ... were entirely real. As was the - entirely unplanned & therefore unrehearsed - 'minor' crash of a civilian's car ... Now THAT was a lucky escape ...
The target of Hackman & Scheider's obsessions is 'Frog One,' Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey), the lynchpin in a large heroin import scam. Whilst the cops get soaked standing out in the rain chewing cold pizza, debonair & urbane Charnier dines sumptuously in warm & expensive restaurants. Marseilles is (still) the centre of Union Corse ('Corsican Union') activities in France & parts of the Mediterranean, much as the Mafia is in Sicily, the Camorra in & around Naples, & the Cosa Nostra in the United States. The source of Union Corse heroin was the Laotian section of the still-flourishing 'Golden Triangle' around Burma-Thailand-Laos (recalll the restaurateur in AIR AMERICA?). When the French pulled out of the region following defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the heroin trade remained largely under Union Corse control; the Communists saw no reason to stop the decadent/capitalist/imperialist [add your own adjective!] West poisoning itself ... preferably American soldiers & draftees in South Vietnam. Contacts with the region still exist.
After a number of surveillances, arrests, a stripped Lincoln Continental (the rocker panels!), a showdown, & a shoot-out ... wily operator Charnier evades capture, although the stash worth $32 million is lost. Ever relentless, vigilante Doyle will not give up:
"The son of a bitch is here. I saw him. I'm gonna get him ..."
Stunning Cinema - By: Mr G R Leslie, 06 Oct 2004 What can you say about this film. arguably one of the high points of the seventies cinema, beginning with this & the Godfather & ending with Apocalypse Now. Some how nobody makes films like this anymore, as this is edgy & dangerous & shot will a semi-documentary style which makes New York look stunning. Modern day thrillers (ie James Bond & Mission Impossible)should take a leaf out of the French Connection & try & follow the trend. Hackman as Popeye Doyle is reallly playing at the top of his game delivering a career defining performance as well is Roy Schieder. The star though is reallly the direction & photography, from a man at the top of his creative powers, which lately seem to have eluded him. Take a bow William Friedkin. The car chase through the city is probably the best ever commited to film, but is exceeded by an awesome ending. If you have a home cinema system, the sound of Schieder firing that pump action shot gun (In 5.1 Surround)at the end is worth buying this DVD alone.
