The French Connection is All About the Chase
You go get ’em, guys
It must be hard to be a man. I have watched and written about eight AFI Top 100 films so far, counting back from 100, and they have all been about the challenges men face in a world that is nevertheless designed entirely to support their comfort and success. Film #93, The French Connection (1971) is no exception.
The one part I enjoyed watching was the iconic chase scene in which a car tries to outrace an above-ground train toward the end of the movie. Show me a YouTube clip of that and call it a day. It was the only part that felt cinematic after the slog of the rest of the film leading up to it. Even then, I cared so little about the painfully macho, totally one-dimensional narcotics cop Jimmy Doyle that I found it really hard to care about whether he succeeded, failed or got flattened by a Krispy Kreme truck. Which he didn’t, but I would have been okay with that.
The other 90% of this film is just watching Doyle and his partner Buddy Russo attempt to covertly follow some drug trafficking suspects around New York City. And they don’t do it well. Doyle pauses to study window displays as if that is a normal thing for a busy New Yorker to do. He stares into a restaurant from across the street for the length of an entire leisurely meal. He gets on and off the subway as his target seems…
