This sequel to the Oscar-winning The French Connection picks up almost exactly where the earlier film leaves off. Still on the trail of drug kingpin Frog One (Fernando Rey), narcotics officer "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman) leaves his Manhattan stomping grounds and heads for Marseilles. There, Popeye is captured by Frog One's minions, who pump him full of drugs in hopes of turning the cop into a hopeless junkie. After a grueling "cold turkey" treatment, Popeye is up and about and chasing after the
villains, determined to mete out justice. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
The last ten minutes are the best thing about it (that final shot is one of the best of the '70s), and it's no coincidence that in this ten minutes Frankenheimer returns to his technician passions.
While it certainly is a couple of notches below its action classic original, French Connection II is still a darned good action film that maintains the core of its central character and has some added layers that are genuinely disturbing.
you can't help but feel a sense of disillusionment ... because the finality of it is so harsh and so sudden that it draws your attention less to the idea of justice served than it does to the brute simplicity of violent retribution and the ultimately cycl
Extras on the disc include two full-length audio commentaries, one by director John Frankenheimer and the other by actor Gene Hackman and producer Robert Rosen.
If you take away comparisons with the original, it's a reasonably solid, if flawed, crime thriller; but it does shrink into the shadow cast by its vastly superior predecessor.
I love 70's crime thrillers and Gene Hackman is always very watchable but this isn't quite the sequel I was hoping for. That said, the acting is brilliant, particularly during the 'Cold Turkey' part of the film that was fairly uncompromising. The ending is also really good too, it just doesn't feel like The French
Connection. Still, very much worth a watch.
A great follow up to the first and in many ways just as entertaining. Itâ??s more about Popeye Doyle rather than the case, but thatâ??s basically what I would want. Gene Hackman plays the character so well that you could watch him for hours and not get tired. I love the fact that it actually ties into the first one
without becoming dependent on it. While it might have the same look, itâ??s a very different film. The characters change and it becomes more about revenge. The heroin scenes really do have an effect on you and I think itâ??s a step that was necessary to make it as gritty as the original. Definitely a great movie that can stand on its own as a crime epic.
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