The French Connection (1971)

The Oscars get a lot of shit for giving too many awards away to classy pictures; nicely polished turds all slick and shiny; films that slide out of Hollywood's freshly-lubed snatch like a prized placenta and dropped right into turn-of-the-century England. That is, of course, when they don't have a good retard movie that year. But these are things you already know.

There are exceptions to the Oscar bias, however, and what you might not know is that A Clockwork Orange was one of them. No, it didn't win, but it was nominated in 1971. Unfortunately, The French Connection broke one off in Kubrick's ass and won Best Picture. But at least the Academy had the balls to continually nominate Kubrick flicks, even if it took him 20 years to get a real award.

The French Connection went overlooked by myself for lots of years, for no reason in particular, and learning this dumb bit of Oscar trivia made me realize I had to check it out. Besides, the DVD shows a Gene Hackman who almost looks as badass as Harvey Keitel does on the cover of Bad Lieutenant.

The movie rides the line between being cool and sophisticated, and although it's much more exciting than the typical Oscar fare, you can see why it was nominated. Certain adjectives come to mind: gritty, realistic, violent, mean, fast-paced, and as it says on Rotten Tomatoes, uncommonly smart. Oh, and well-acted, I guess. Did I mention Roy Scheider is his partner?

Both of them were nominated for awards, but only Hackman won. For obvious reasons: he's got a more expressive face. And, he yells a lot.

Anyway, movie summaries are really fucking annoying in reviews, so I'll spin it for you quick: it's the quintessential good cop/bad cop movie, Hackman & Scheider are Popeye & Cloudy, and Popeye's the bad cop, but he's really good. Really, really. Too good. He has a hunch about some random guys he sees, thinking they're drug-smugglers. Of course no one believes him, not even his partner, and of course he's right. 

A lot of good things about this movie, including some masterful chase scenes, if that's your fetish. Some car, some on foot, and Hackman runs his balls off in this flick. But the best thing about the movie is dialogue like this:

Popeye

You dumb guinea.

Cloudy

How the hell was I supposed to know he had a knife.

Popeye

Never trust a nigger. 

Cloudy

He could have been white. 

Popeye

Never trust anyone!