Another stone cold classic ‘Christmas adjacent’ film is next with the excellent The French Connection from 1971. William Friedkin’s thriller about a couple of tough New York narcotics cops tacking drug smugglers is another one where all the action takes place around the festive season and, though Christmas isn’t too important to the actual plot, the festive backdrop adds distinctive flavour. With those gorgeous window displays, decorations, cold foggy breath in the air, the Big Apple here is both beguiling and downright dirty.
Detectives “Popeye” Doyle (Gene Hackman) and “Cloudy” Russo (Roy Scheider) shake down hustlers and hoods in the city’s scummiest locales in their quest to halt the import of $32million of heroin from France. In Popeye’s world it’s all melting piles of exhaust fume-stained snow, hordes of kranky holiday shoppers and freezing his ass off while flash European drug lords enjoy fancy five-star cuisine in a restaurant across the street. This reminds me of my day job that involves tackling benefit fraud - we have to do so much drab work, adhering to rules and regulations, while the crooks just do what they want.
Friedkin’s film gives a real flavour of the hard procedural work involved - it’s not all gunfights and stunts, though the director does give one of the most thrilling car chases ever filmed with Doyle mercilessly racing across the city in pursuit of a runaway train. It’s peerless white-knuckle, edge-of-your-seat stuff.
The big car chase is representative of this guy’s stubborn determination - it’s written all over Hackman’s face (who won an Oscar for this) that Popeye cannot, will not stop until he catches this prick. Interestingly, he’s also a thoroughly unlikeable protagonist, a racist, rule-breaking asshole though one that gets results, goddammit. The film gets extra Christmas points for Popeye’s rip-roaring introduction where, undercover in a bright red Santa suit, he chases down and beats the living shit out of a small-time hood.
This one’s notorious for its ambiguous, downbeat ending. I suppose that’s like Christmas in a way, with lots of build-up and an inevitable feeling of disappointment as you never truly get everything you wanted. The film hits home all the harder when you realise it’s based on a true story where the bad guys pretty much got away clean. Lucky for us, Hackman would reprise his role four years later in the far-less realistic sequel, travelling to France to kick some ass and get revenge. Hooray! It’s not set at Christmas, though.
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