Rightly remembered for a pivotal car chase...

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 22, 2025

Gritty, downbeat and, in Hackman’s “Popeye” Doyle, fronted by one of the most unlikely heroes that cinema had seen, this was one of the great films of Hollywood’s most creatively uncompromising period.

| Jan 27, 2024

The French Connection gives us suspense mixed with violence, and the cocktail is so volatile that you don't really care if the film is nothing more than two hours of fun in the dark.

| Oct 3, 2023

Filled with heart pounding sequences, The French Connection satisfies as a gritty crime drama.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 13, 2023

Embedded in the style and themes of classic film noir, The French Connection is a grim and relentless detective thriller that is celebrated as one of the most authentic films about police work (and features the greatest car chase in film history).

| Jun 8, 2023

[The film] is neither a documentary nor a grim slice of life but simply entertainment -- violent and bloody, yes, but still the kind of action and suspense stuff that kept the pulp fiction magazine alive for years and still intrigues most of us.

| May 16, 2023

The stunts are done with terrifying conviction. And Gene Hackman, savage exasperated gestures and the mad ill-assembled features of a puppet carved from packing-case wood, gives a performance of devoted, inexorable vindictiveness.

| Aug 8, 2022

It's not what I want not because it fails but because of what it is. It is, I think, what we once feared mass entertainment might become: jolts for jocks.

| Jul 29, 2022

If you want a dog-eared guide book, stuffed with authentic detail, to the work of the New York narcotics squad, this is your film. It certainly is mine. Every element coalesces into a hard bunch of excitement you can't imagine belter done.

| Feb 10, 2022

Written by Ernest Tidyman and directed by William Friedkin, It has exactly the kind of ruthless professionalism and headlong pace one ands in the American cinema at its best.

| Feb 10, 2022

The French Connection helps bring about a new era in filmmaking--much thanks to Friedkin and company--and cinema would never be the same.

| Oct 8, 2021

Director William Friedkin has carefully contrived the intense action of this film to jolt you, to assault your nervous system. He is undeniably successful.

| Apr 15, 2021

Friedkin has a gripping story to tell and wastes little time with diversionary devices.

| Apr 15, 2021

No matter how hard I try to control my enthusiasm, I cannot help thinking that The French Connection is the most exciting, most stylish -- in fact, the best piece of cops-and-robbers cinema since the silents.

| Apr 15, 2021

Apart from telling a pretty exciting story with great mechanical skill, Friedkin examines the cop and his prey with a sceptic's eye.

| Apr 15, 2021

Quite efficient but pretty unremarkable.

| Apr 15, 2021

One of the most exciting and breathtaking chase films ever made.

| Apr 15, 2021

Director William Friedkin, whose previous efforts were The The Night Raided Minsky's and The Boys in the Band proves expert at keeping the customers on the edge of their seats by automating comedic moments with moments of violence.

| Apr 15, 2021

Go to The French Connection for edge of the seat entertainment, but don't expect any moral to rationalize your fun. It's a rip-roaring, bloody bash of a movie and it needs no messagizing to justify its existence.

| Apr 15, 2021

Connection tells a straight story, has some respect for its viewer's intelligence, and maintains dramatic situations that build with increasing tension from one scene to another.

| Apr 15, 2021