Rating of
2/4
The French Connection review
Daniel Corleone - wrote on 08/21/11
In a New York setting, detectives James "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman) and Buddy "Cloudy" Russo (Roy Scheider) try to investigate a drug shipment. So many characters involved and insufficient time for character development. You hardly know the story of Doyle and Russo, not even a history of the criminals Tony Lo Bianco as Salvatore 'Sal' Boca, Marcel Bozzuffi as Pierre Nicoli, Hit Man and Frédéric de Pasquale as Henri Devereaux. One of the conspicuous qualms I have aside from the lack of character build-up were the length of the scenes that are not interlinked with the story (long chases/walks, a few arrests, etc.) and likeability of the leads. Yes Popeye is a good cop, yet he sleeps with a chick and makes errors that would make his search unbelievable since there is no concrete evidence. You can see the film’s tempo and setting is dated and that the criminals outsmart the protagonists. Acting was good but the score was not really memorable and was not essential in certain scenes that could have been emphasized. The ending was fitting as if mirroring my outlook about this film.
