Synopsis
Tough narcotics detective 'Popeye' Doyle is in hot pursuit of a suave French drug dealer who may be the key to a huge heroin-smuggling operation.
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Cast
- Gene HackmanJimmy Doyle
- Fernando ReyAlain Charnier
- Roy ScheiderBuddy Russo
- Tony Lo BiancoSal Boca
- Marcel BozzuffiPierre Nicoli
- Frédéric de PasqualeDevereaux
- Bill HickmanMulderig
- Ann RebbotMarie Charnier
- Harold GaryWeinstock
- Arlene FarberAngie Boca
Recommendations
- 100
TV Guide Magazine
This tough, brilliant crime film features Hackman as the indefatigable Popeye Doyle, who passionately hates drug pushers. - 100
Chicago Tribune
There is only one problem with the excitement generated by this film. After it is over, you will walk out of the theater and, as I did, curse the tedium of your own life. I kept looking for someone who I could throw up against a wall. [8 November 1971] - 100
Empire
Friedkin's hand-held documentary style was the perfect vehicle for the film's pumped-up verite. - 100
Slant Magazine
An electrifying achievement, drawing its high-voltage forward momentum from the collision of semi-documentary procedural, with its based-on-real-events verisimilitude, and downbeat rogue-cop revisionism. - 100
Chicago Sun-Times
The French Connection is routinely included, along with "Bullitt," "Diva" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark," on the short list of movies with the greatest chase scenes of all time. What is not always remembered is what a good movie it is apart from the chase scene. - 91
The A.V. Club
I'd seen moments from that chase for years, held up as an example of what makes the film great. And it is a great sequence. But it's even better in context, arriving after many scenes of false starts, wrong turns, and frustrating dead ends, like a brilliantly staged cat-and-mouse game on the subway involving Doyle and Fernando Rey's smooth French gangster. The explosions have even more impact when you first get to see the fuses slowly burning down...It's also what most imitators don't get. You can put together the most exciting sequence ever filmed, and it won't matter—or at least won't matter beyond the seconds it takes to unfold—if the material around it isn't there. - 90
The New York Times
The French Connection is a film of almost incredible suspense, and it includes, among a great many chilling delights, the most brilliantly executed chase sequence I have ever seen. [8 October 1971] - 90
Variety
Producer and screenwriter have added enough fictional flesh to provide director William Friedkin and his overall topnotch cast with plenty of material, and they make the most of it.
