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Such a frustrating disappointment

People are voting emotionally.

Fresh and Exciting

As Good As It Gets

Two cops who are just bad at their jobs, try to pull of a drug bust in New York City with the French mafia involved.

I had never seen this much lauded movie from 1971 about New York City police detectives intercepting a heroin shipment from France. The first thing that struck me when watching the film was the grimness of 1970s New York City, its highways, streets and subway are excellently captured by the director with its sounds of street horns replacing the need for a soundtrack. The main characters are police officers Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman) and his slightly younger partner Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider). Hackman and Scheider both look so young when I consider there later roles in films such as Jaws (Scheider) and the Superman franchise (Hackman). Popeye (not the cartoon character!) is an overtly racist, streetwise cop whilst Russo is the calming influence in the partnership! The drug side is led by Marseilles entrepreneur Charnier (Fernando Rey), the late Spanish Rey is perhaps best known for his work on some of Luis Buñuel films and has a filmography as big as anyone! Tony Lo Bianco who I only watched last week in the cult classic The Honeymoon Killers also has a role. The grime of New York is contrasted with the opulence of Marseilles and a brief scene in Washington DC. A chase sequence featuring a gas guzzling car of the era against an overhead Subway train is memorable for its editing and realism. The film won Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actor (Hackman) and editing Oscars. Whilst good I don't actually rate it as good as Dirty Harry starring Clint Eastwood. Again perhaps its is the grime of a cold, winter New York versus the relative sunshine of San Francisco? Also the film ends pretty downbeat with drugs being smuggled into New York via a Lincoln car, Charnier escaping the law and a ruined building scene.

I thought I would see an intelligent movie with great actors about a dense scheme that deeply concerned the authorities, considering the score and fame here in IMDb. 5 Oscars? That was a little too much. Well, it is just a badly directed movie from start to end with poor ideas... And the scenes are poorly edited as well. Lousy. Completely lousy.They could have made a complex and brilliant movie about the scheme as a whole, featuring dense characters. However, they chose to make a tom & jerry kinda of movie with a simplistic approach - dumb cops chasing even dumber criminals. I only gave score 2 because I enjoyed Fernando Rey's performance even though his character was completely shallow. I don't recommend you to read what was the real scheme or you will get even more frustrated due to the fact that it wasn't just a French crime boss walking around as a lone wolf desperately trying to sell 60 Kg of cocaine in less than a week. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Connection

Dear William Friedkin, The French Connection was a really gritty crime drama with the cops and drug sellers playing hide and seek in the backdrop of New York. Gene Hackman is tough and menacing as the alcoholic and lecherous cop. Roy Scheider's sober cop is a perfect foil and sidekick for Hackman's Popeye. Fernado Rey's high life as a sophisticated drug supplier is placed parallel to the low life of the two cops but their stories do intersect once in a while. The film looked a lot like a documentary. The visuals were stark and moody and there was hardly any light in many of the scenes. The editing was best described by you yourself, William. You said as an audience, you never knew what the next cut was going to be. The first running chase and Hackman's car chase of his potential assassin were both thrilling. Anurag Kashyap overdid it in Black Friday. This is my third favorite film directed by you, after The Exorcist and The Sorcerer. Best Regards, Pimpin. (8/10)