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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"The Tuminaro Case", August 15, 2003
The Tuminaro Case. That is what the law enforcement community calls "the French Connection" case of 1968. Two rough-and-tumble NYPD Narcotics detectives named Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso stumbled on a heroin-smuggling ring which spanned the Atlantic and linked the New York Mafia with a French mob operating out of Marsailles, which, if you are not familiar with it, is a great port city in the Mediterranean famous for, among other things, being a stop on the great heroin pipeline between Turkey, Siciily, Corsica, Continental Europe, and the Big Apple. This discovery was the birth of the understanding that the heroin trade was big international business, being conducted on a breathtaking scale, and the efforts of local cops and a few federal agents to stop it by busting junkies and street dealers was as ludicrous as handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500.
In the end, somewhere between 100 - 300 kilos of pure heroin were seized, the ring was smashed, two cops sprung to fame by making the big case ("Went through The Door", in NYPD Narc lexicon), and the soon-to-be legendary NYPD Special Investigations Unit was created. But at what cost, and to what end?This is what the film version of "The French Connection" examines, changing the names of the players (to Popeye Doyle, played by the great Gene Hackman, and Cloudy Russo, played by the criminally underrated Roy Schieder, respectively) but leaving the basic facts of the story intact. Very few movies have attempted to show the methodology and mind-set of Narc detectives without either glamorizing them or apologizing for them; "TFC" does neither. Doyle is a truly disgusting human being, but a [darn] good cop. He has the ego, the spleen, the recklessness, and the obsessive won't-let-go mentality of a pit bull, which more or less typefied the Narcs of the pre-Knapp Comission years. If you want a cop like Doyle off your case, you pretty much have to kill him. And if you try, don't miss. The SIU, an elite branch of the Narcotics Division, was born during this investigation. No police unit in history probably bagged more hard drugs, busted more big-name dealers, or wrought such havoc with the drug trade in the Big Apple. On the other hand, no police unit in history ever broke so many laws doing it:
the tactics used by Doyle and Russo in "TFC" became standard procedure for the SIU: Illegal wiretaps. Shakedowns. Theft of money. Distribution of heroin to informants. Perjury. Extortion. Entrapment. You name it, they did it, and operated with virtually no supervision for about ten years before another famous cop, Bob Leuici, who got his own movie ("Prince of the City") brought down the house by exposing its inherent corruption. About seventy detectives served in SUI and of them, more than fifty ended up being indicted, and most went to prison. A number killed themselves. In a moment of true irony, several SIU detectives were fingered in the theft of 300 pounds of heroin from the police evidence lockup. The heroin in question was the evidence seized by Egan and Grosso in the Tuminaro Case. So in the end, it was largely for nothing. The H hit the street anyway. I read some review of this film which question its morality, its supposed affirmantion of the 'war on drugs' and even liken "Connection" to the Nazi propiganda film "Triumph of the Will" because it seems to endorse the ends-justifying-tactics of Doyle and Russo. These people are missing the point entirely. The French Connection is not politicized fiction, like "Blow." It is a real case, the detectives were real people, and these were the real methods they used to crack it. The scene where Hackman chases his would-be assassin all across New York, endangering the lives of about 100 people in the process, says more than any dialogue could about his personality. In other words, this movie isn't about the drug trade, it's about the cops who fight it.
"TFC" is NOT an endorsement of the war on drugs; it simply lays out what happened here in a dramatized fashion. Like all great movies, it does not tell the viewer what to think but allows him/her to come to his own conclusion. And by the way, the movie most certainly DOES imply that the drug war, or at least this particular battle in it, was futile. The 'what happened to them' blurbs at the end of the film demonstrate this in no uncertain terms. Looking back I see this is not a proper review of the film but more of a rant. ... I'm through venting. Sorry. I'll make up for it with this: "The French Connection" is a great crime drama, brilliantly acted, superbly directed, and deserves every bit of its reputation as one of the greatest films of all time. I'm going to buy it on DVD today.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Many have tried, but none have successfully duplicated it., July 24, 2001
I can't tell you how much I am looking forward to the DVD-release of this terrific film. Anyone who appreciates gritty, police dramas such as Hill Street Blues and NYPD can thank director William Friedkin, who set the standard with this movie. Two years later the same director made the stuffy Academy members start taking the Horror genre seriously with his release of The Exorcist. And Friedkin was way ahead of his time with the 1970 gay- themed The Boys in the Band. The man is quite a trendsetter, not to mention a damn fine director.Gene Hackman, one of the finest, most versatile actors around, gives the performance of his career as the impulsive, almost maniacal, Popeye Doyle. Hackman's "balls-out" performance earned him the Academy Award for best actor. Incidentally, it is the tenacity of his character which adds to the rush of the famous car/el-train chase. No one is going to take a pop at this guy and just slink away! And what about the chase-scene? Some, including myself, feel that this is the best one ever on film. Others say it was done better in The Road Warrior; or Bullitt; or Raiders of the Lost Ark; or The Seven-Ups. ( Ronin is mentioned also, but I have never seen it.) These movies all had great chases, but they were shot either in the desert (Road Warrior and Raiders) or largely in the open road (Bullitt and Seven-Ups). In The French Connection, however, the pursuit takes place in a crowded Brooklyn commuter hub. And appropriately so, as the film is all about the grit of the big city. Working within this challenging setting, editor Jerry Greenberg does a tremendous job of maintaining the continuity of a rather lengthy sequence of high-speed events. There is more that can be said about this great movie, but I'll leave it at this: Unlike a previous reviewer, I have no trouble discerning how this film earned its five Oscars.
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24 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the greatest films ever made, October 27, 2006
Even though there's nothing to say about this now 35-year-old masterpiece that hasn't been said by someone somewhere, I can't resist offering my opinion on the greatest cop movie ever made and, in all likelihood, one of the 10 best films ever made.
How can a film be better than this one? It deservedly won five Oscars including best picture, best actor (Gene Hackman), its script and editing. Film editing is probably the most common downfall of a movie that is the least understood by the average filmgoer. aside from inane scriptwriting, it is editing that either turns individual scenes into something larger that its parts or robs those scenes of their vigor and value by misplacing them in the overall sequence of events.
There are so many good things going on in this film -- the action, ultra-intelligent script based on a real life incident, the acting, the locations, the searing score using knife sharp high strings and bellowing lower strings, and William Friedkin's monumental direction that included the unplanned train chase scene that is now considered the greatest chase in film ("We didn't ask anyone for a permit," Friedkin said. "We just did it.") -- that it is somewhat foolhardy to identify one element as the key to this masterpiece. Still, I believe the editing is what transforms "French Connection" from five stars to masterpiece.
I first saw this movie in 1971 during a matinee at an old big city theatre, now bulldozed, the kind of theatre that used to exist before malls took over the industry. While the chase scene was just as riveting then as now on the big screen, it was an earlier scene that more captivated me.
In the second scene, Hackman and Scheider go to a drinking establishment where a Supremes-like trio is singing. The reality and scope of this scene far more overwhelmed me on the big screen than any other. It also happens to be the scene where the two cops first identify bad guy Tony LoBianco -- who followed his success in this film with a lot of appearances on the 1970s CBS cop show "Kojak" -- as an emerging kingpin throwing around money with some druggie hotshots.
It probably isn't possible to explain to today's moviegoers what a drug kingpin was circa 1971. Drugs are so ingrained in our culture now, with kids regularly taking them to and selling them in school, that the profundity of such a scene in a film can no longer have the same meaning three and one-half decades later.
The final scene, in the decrepit buildings on Riker's Island, is another ultrarealistic scene that puts the viewer at the scene of the crime and the ongoing melodrama. That inconclusive ending was true and commonplace for its period, a time when the "antihero" film was emerging. The popular cop films from the "Dirty Harry" series, as well as Charles Bronson's "Death Wish" films, were clearly influenced by the antihero aspects of the "The French Connection" cops and their futility.
A cast note: Marcel Bozzuffi, the hitman character known as Pierre Nicoli in the film, played a different type of killer two years earlier in the remarkable 1969 French film "Z", a political thriller with much of "The French Connection"'s sizzling energy. And like this film, "Z" was also based on true events. Check this out next time you're in the mood for one of the better films of that era.
Far from being a timepiece, this film is just as contemporary today as it was when it came out -- a time when there was no Internet, cell phones or cable television, there was only one American telephone company and gas cost about 30 cents a gallon. This film will always be among the handful of critics' short A-list movies and I'll continue to watch it at every opportunity. I suggest you take a look if you've never seen it. There will never be another quite like it.
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