[You want not to think for once. No “female problem” movie reviews; no fancy emotions, no artsy-fartsy stuff. “I wanna be stupid!” you say. “I want basic entertainment where the bad guys get a kick in the ass, to go with cheap chips and brewskis!” We hear you! Without further ado….]
[Edited 5/24/12, partly to offer a version without that weird placeholder YouTube-like thing in the May 23 version—I don’t know what it is, or why it gets there. The only notable difference between this and the May 23 version should be that I deleted one point that I thought better of.]
Let me try to keep this simple, and not fuss over every sentence as I do with some other entries (that call for that, for good reason). This movie should be fairly familiar to people about age 45 and older, and I would think among many younger ones too. It may seem old-hat and old-fashioned now (and certainly its style seems echoed in numerous police shows, starting I guess with Hill Street Blues, since), but it has a few distinctions:
(1) it is one of only two movies (the other being The Exorcist) comprising the basis for the reputation of its director William Friedkin, one of the directors who are lumped in with the “Second Golden Age of Hollywood” directors (like Scorsese, Coppola, Hal Ashby, Robert Altman, and others); (2) it made Gene Hackman a major star, after his only other notable role being that of Clyde Barrow’s brother in Bonnie and Clyde (1967); (3) it also jump-started the movie career of costar Roy Scheider, impressing Steven Spielberg enough that he made Scheider his shore police chief in Jaws (1975) (according to Jaws DVD commentary); and…
(4) It is perhaps the first major film of the seventies that introduced, in what Friedkin called its “induced-documentary” style, a sort of quick-shot, quick-edited style that seems geared to short attention spans. (Some discussion of what arduous work it took to make this film is in the book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls…[see end note 1]) This quick-moving style, I think, it what keeps it interesting on repeat viewings, while its dreary wintertime New York setting, tanky Vietnam-era cars (the type that occasionally could use starter fluid to get running), and suitably weary-colored cinematography may seem apropos for a story of dour, intrepid police business in a bitter winter, but may be like ashes in young people’s mouths today.
This movie (Wikipedia article here), of course, is based on a nonfiction book by Robin Moore, about a real-life police investigation and foiling of a major heroin-smuggling operation in New York City that was the largest such bust until that time (and perhaps for some years after). The two police who spearheaded the operation, which apparently was in the very early 1960s (about 10 years before FC was made), were Irish-stock Eddie Egan and Italian-American Sonny “Cloudy” Grosso; at least they became the basis for the two major figures in the fictional story.
The real-life investigation involved federal-level operatives as well as New York police; and I think, from what Friedkin says in his during-the-movie commentary on the DVD (worth checking out if you are really interested in this film), the movie—with some boiling-down aspects—represents the main features of the investigation pretty well (that is, the movie distills the story down quite a bit). (According to Friedkin in DVD commentary, there were considerably more operatives involved in the actual investigation than the four men involved in the movie—Popeye, Cloudy, Mulderig, and Klein. Also, I think the real investigation took considerably longer than the several weeks it seems to be in the movie.)
Two star cops anchor the story
The two New York policemen, of course, were apparently well enough represented by the two stars of the movie: for one thing, Egan, portrayed as Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle who is played by Hackman in a porkpie hat and blue-collarish-guy manner, was, by all suggestions you gather from the movie and otherwise, a very dedicated, even slightly manic, policeman who was effective enough (if sometimes unorthodox) in his work. This dedication (and personal style) seem to have been essential to the successful outcome of this heroin bust. Grosso, portrayed as Buddy “Cloudy” Russo and by Scheider in the film, was a more subdued, seemingly more level-headed partner (the nickname “Cloudy,” a play on the real man’s name, was apparently inspired by his relatively saturnine personality); nevertheless he was also essential, I suppose, in giving some practical grounding to the more spirited, even somewhat rampaging style of Egan/Doyle.
Egan also has a role in the film, as Doyle and Russo’s supervisor, Walt Simonson, and Grosso has a role as federal-level helper Klein; he is the investigator who follows Alain Charnier (casually referred to as “Frog 1,” and played by Spaniard Fernando Rey), when he travels to Washington, D.C., to meet secretly with Sal Boca (played by Tony Lo Bianco).
There is plenty of background available on this movie—in the DVD, on the Internet, and in such a book as Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (end note 1). (On the DVD, there is even extras honoring policemen Egan and Grosso, as if the DVD was made as much for a NYPD market as for anyone else.)
There is some insider-speak one might be confused by in this film. The most common police slang is “make” or some variation on that—which means, here, “recognize.” It can be used in terms of both a cop “making” (recognizing) a criminal as what he is and a criminal doing similar with an undercover cop.
Hackman’s performance establishes a lot of the flavor of Popeye, which became iconic in the 1970s; [point that was here is deleted]. Hackman was a Midwesterner, and Friedkin makes a point on the DVD of saying that Hackman was by no means his first choice for the role; one actor he preferred was Peter Boyle, who had appeared in, among others, the film Joe (~1970). Friedkin had to ride Hackman hard when making FC to get the manic city-Irishman quality he apparently wanted out of him; this apparently became one key to the film’s success and to the ascent of Hackman’s career, partly because if Hackman is remembered for any character, it is this one.
One of the most well-developed scenes in the movie is when Popeye and Cloudy are in the nightclub after work, as the real-life singing group The Three Degrees is performing (they later had a radio hit with “When Will I See You Again?”). Popeye is shown to be prodigiously intuitive, as he is intrigued by, and examines, a table including an unsettling mix of characters: “two drug connections” whom Popeye “make[s]”; an apparent police functionary identified by Cloudy as “that policy guy from Queens”; an ex-con referred to as “Jewish lucky”; and a few others, including a man whom they eventually will identify as Sal Boca, who turns out to be the on-the-street point man for the big heroin case that is the focus of the movie.
It later becomes key to Popeye’s case that he presents to his supervisor Walt, in arguing for further support such as a wiretap, that Sal Boca is engaging in activity linked to Joel Weinstock, a figure who has an illicit banking role, who apparently had been involved in such activity in the past; according to some background info (maybe on the movie DVD), the fictional Weinstock character actually represented more than one person with the same kind of role in the real-life case. Also, it is interesting that the film does not spell out that some players in this drug conspiracy are members of the Mafia; such a term is never used in the film, though the overall story—what you would have expected in such a milieu and in 1961 or so—would seem to suggest their involvement. In fact, FC came out a year before The Godfather, which arguably was the film that put the concept of the Mafia squarely in the American popular consciousness, in all its aspects (“romanticizing” and otherwise, with accepted terminology and certain stock concepts like “sleeping with the fishes”).
Dated, and race-related, qualities; car chase clinches excitement
It is interesting to consider that, while the real story of FC took place in about 1961 and was something of an unstated Mafia-related story, the issue of Blacks’ involvement in the story is different, as posing potential controversy. Even if a Black drug-using culture was part of the story in 1961 (which I’m not sure about), it is so conspicuously an aspect in the 1971 movie that, today, we would say this movie seems a bit racist in making it seem that the main beneficiaries of a huge heroin shipment that means “Everybody’s going to get well” are streetwise, big-afro’d Blacks who hang out in their own clubs, with occasional soul music emanating from a jukebox. This seems like a sort of early-1970s stereotype—as it would be in the eyes of Archie Bunker types—of what segment of the U.S. population was going to hell in such a way that it was the magnet for major Mafia-shepherded drug crime.
Meanwhile, from what I’ve heard, when Blacks first saw this film in 1971, they cheered as if at a gloriously redeeming expose, because it showed how abusive a white cop could be to Blacks, as Doyle is with those he accosts to press them for information, etc.
In a sense, Doyle with his angry persona not only was someone for an angry white audience to identify with, but the movie as a whole seems to echo anger across the board in the later Vietnam-War years: anger among Blacks; anger throughout society at how things seemed to come apart at the seams… And the chop-chop editing seems to mirror almost a fit-throwing way of relating a story that wasn’t meant to comfort, but was tailored to a spell of venting by—whoever.
Of course, if early-’70s viewers didn’t get enough easy “catharsis” from all the more typical frenetic police-thriller action in this film, there was the famous car chase, with Popeye driving the Pontiac whatever-muscle-car under the El train to catch up with Charnier’s ruthless right-hand man Pierre Nicoli, played by Marcel Bozzuffi. Made to top the famous car chase in the Steve McQueen thriller Bullitt (1968), this one was filmed over about two weeks, in conditions Friedkin was young and reckless enough to pursue (and which he seems to admit he would never try today). However many cars were used, and obviously a stunt driver and not simply Hackman was used to drive the car (though he does drive it in select places), this sequence remains exciting with each re-viewing, and shows what can be done without CGI; for one thing, those are real collisions the Pontiac has with vehicles whose drivers apparently weren’t expecting them.
Sequel
FC was enough of a hit that, in a new technique for Hollywood movies that weren’t narrow genre fare, it spawned a sequel, with Roman numeral in the title (French Connection II, without “The”), similar to The Godfather’s spouting a similarly titled sequel—FC II appearing in 1975. FC II is what today we would call a star vehicle; it doesn’t have nearly as much of a story as the first installment, nor as much suspense/interest. Hackman does a good job with a character study in this sequel—as he chases after and eventually catches Alain Charnier, again played by Spaniard Fernando Rey—Popeye traveling with big set of bags to Marseilles, France, to do the honors.
One aspect of the sequel that may put a pall on the viewing pleasure of some is a spell of withdrawal from heroin that Popeye undergoes, after having been addicted by baddie Charnier. Presumably this is to make you more sympathetically gung-ho in backing Popeye’s fierce mission to vanquish Charnier. The movie is well constructed, visually and editing-wise, by director John Frankenheimer—the director of the first Manchurian Candidate. But it is probably primarily for fans of the first FC, and then they might see it only once.
End note 1.
