The French Connection Blu-ray Edition
The French Connection stars Gene Hackman as the gritty and tough cop Popeye Doyle as he does whatever it takes to stop a narcotics smuggling ring.
Film making 24/25
Cinematography 24/25
Audio 24/25
Bonus Features 25/25
Total 93/100
Gene Hackman and Roy Sheider star as James “Popeye” Doyle and Buddy Russo, two tough New York detectives out to stop the flow of narcotics into the United States. During a stakeout they chase down and apprehend a suspect who is selling drugs and they get a tip about where the drugs are coming from.
When they finish the arrest and are done with fixing up a knife wound they go out for a drink and Doyle takes them to a local hot spot for mobsters. They witness a couple spending large sums of money on known mob members and follow them to their small newsstand diner.
They find out the couple owns the small diner and have several arrests for drug related crimes so the detectives know they are in deep with something illegal. To find out more information Doyle and Russo roust a local bar that is a known hangout for small time criminals and drug dealers to find an undercover officer.
They beat the officer up some to give him a cover for him talking to the police and find out some more information about the diner owners, the Bocas, and who may be supplying them with drugs. The detectives find out that Alain Charnier may be behind the drug smuggling and discover a car being shipped into the country using a French actor as the owner.
Doyle and Russo stake out the car when it is dropped off in a very bad neighborhood to see who picks the vehicle up but some small time gangsters try to steal parts of the car. The police bring the car into their vehicle garage and tear out nearly all the car trying to find the drugs and eventually do.
An identical car is given to the actor when he comes to pick up the vehicle thinking it has been stolen and the police tail the vehicle to a small storage facility under a bridge on a small island. The police wait near the bridge leading to the island the facility is on while the drug dealers handle taking the drugs out of the car and concluding their business.
When the first drug smugglers try to leave the island the police are waiting and storm the small facility to arrest all the drug dealers. Alain Charnier runs down into the basement of a building trying to flee the police as Russo and others shoot it out with the rest of the drug dealers.
Doyle runs after Charnier and follows him into the building with an FBI agent also following who has a bad past with Doyle after a shooting where a police officer was killed. The FBI agent, Mulderig, blames Doyle for the officer’s death and several times in the movie Doyle and the agent come to blows and verbal assaults.
Charnier is running through the building with Doyle hot on his heels and Doyle is so intent on catching him that he does not see the FBI agent also following Charnier. Doyle shoots what he believes is Charnier and hits the FBI agent several times, killing him.
Russo rushes on the scene to see Doyle has killed Mulderig and the two have lost Charnier who got away while they stood over the body of the agent. The end of the film has the two being reassigned to different positions in the department and all the other drug smugglers either being killed in the shootout or doing time for their crimes.
Alain Charnier got away and that would bring me to the French Connection II in my next review, but first to the bonus features of this film. The Blu-ray edition of the French Connection has an introduction to the film and a commentary track by director William Friedkin on the movie disc.
The second disc has a lot of making of features, a documentary on the Poughkeepsie Shuffle, a documentary on the real French Connection drug smuggling event and more. They have included a few documentaries and enough extras to keep you busier than watching the movie with plenty of entertaining and relevant bonus content.
The French Connection won plenty of awards including Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Writing and Film Editing as well as a host of other film awards. The film does an excellent job of showing the real work of a police officer in stakeouts and tailing people with several scenes.
The mundane work of a police officer is evident like waiting for someone to take the car with the drugs or waiting outside in the cold watching Alain Charnier while he eats a lavish meal in a restaurant. These brief looks at the more boring aspects of police work is clearly shown in the film as well as a couple of the extra features that made the film such a hit.
A lot about The French Connection brought out the movies better sides like this with plenty of realistic aspects of not only police work but the times the film was made in. Several of the scenes in the film were not previously filmed or so well shown in movies or television and this culminated in the car chase scene.
The Chase Scene has Doyle trying to catch an assassin who tried to kill him with Doyle driving a car he commandeered and the killer riding on a train. The scene is a great piece of stunt driving and was well filmed as well as having an interesting history for the filming.
The scene involved stunt driver and actor, he played the part of FBI Agent Mulderig, Bill Hickman as he drove a car at high speeds through the streets of Brooklyn with a camera operator in the back seat. The camera operator was wrapped in a mattress for protection while the car drove through the streets with just a blaring siren to tell people to get out of the way.
The movie has other great moments and the Blu-ray edition does a great job of fleshing them out and bring them to life with its great audio but the video was just not going to do much better for the time it was filmed. Here we have a time when film and the technology are not going to be brought to the normal Blu-ray standards but the audio is very good and does have a great quality in high definition.
The Blu-ray does contain all the extras on a two disc set and the additional commentary adds a lot to the film when it was shot so many years ago. Some of the bonus content is a nice reflection for several of the cast and crew about the film and how things look now when they look back at their work.
The French Connection is a great film and the Blu-ray edition brings all the extras and bonus features you could want to the film for a great entertainment experience.