New York police officers ‘Popeye’ Doyle (Gene Hackman) and ‘Cloudy’ Russo (Roy Scheider) think they have stumbled onto a massive drug smuggling ring.
But can they prove it?
Far from the sunshine of Bullitt and the reassured cool of Steve McQueen’s persona, The French Connection is grim and claustrophobic.
Without the presence of an established star, the film is given a greater sense of unpredictability and stakes.
Unlike Frank Bullitt, Gene Hackman’s Popeye Doyle feels like a deconstruction of the loner lawman.
Doyle is a man who believes in his hunches.
Before the movie has started, he has a reputation for failing. He is a loose cannon with a specific skill set, but the film seems more fascinated by his mindset than endorsing it.
In Bullitt, the character’s investigation was sidelined by scenes of his everyday life. Bullitt keeps his professional and personal lives separate - something highlighted in the moment when his lives cross, when his girlfriend stumbles onto a crime scene he is working.
By contrast, Popeye has no life - he is constantly working. Even when he and partner Cloudy (Roy Scheider) go to a bar for a drink, he uses it to surveil some gangsters at a nearby table.
He is never shown at home or having any relationships beyond Cloudy.
While they create a sense of verisimilitude, sequences of process serve as signs of Popeye’s obsessive drive - stakeouts, the subway peekaboo with Charnier (Fernando Rey), the stripping of the car.
Doyle cannot let it go - even after he accidentally kills his nemesisFBI Agent Bill Mulderig (Bill Hickman), he staggers out into the void to try and prove his hunch right.
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