Wiretips and surveillance lead the cops to unlikely kingpin Charnier (Fernando Rey), a dapper, wealthy, and nearly elderly Frenchman. Federal agent Mulderig (Bill Hickman) is brought on board to help with the growing scale of the crime investigation. There is bad blood between Mulderig and Doyle, due to the death of a cop in a prior case that Mulderig blames on Doyle.
Doyle attempts to capture Charier, but the latter proves too shrewd. Doyle's activity draws the attention of Charnier henchman Nicoli, who attempts to murder Doyle, but, because it is a movie, fails. Nicoli briefly manages to elude the pursuing Doyle by boarding a train, but Doyle commandeers a car, chases the train for several miles, then executes the dazed Nicoli when he emerges after killing a cop and causing an accident.
Later, Doyle and Russo succeed in locating the heroin before it trades hands, in an unassuming car that they then trace to the gangs of French and Italian-American criminals. A shootout ensues.
How others will see it. The French Connection drew critical praise from the onset as a gripping crime drama. The big beneficiaries were Gene Hackman, who won the Oscar for Best Actor, and William Friedkin, who landed the Best Director Oscar. Roy Scheider, whose big film Jaws was still four years away, was Oscar-nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Other Academy Awards included Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay.
The movie was also a great commercial success, trailing only Fiddler on the Roof at the box office among 1971 films. Today at imdb.com, the user vote total of 71K is impressive, but the user rating of 7.8 is slightly lower than expected. Women grade it a bit lower than do men, perhaps put off by Doyle's accidental shooting of Mulderig, Hackman's reckless driving, and Rey's timely escape. These final plot events set the stage for the sequel (appropriately named The French Connection II) which was interesting but substantially less successful.
Director Friedkin's next film The Exorcist was also a great critical and commercial smash, but Sorcerer (1977) was a bust on both counts, and took the wind out of his career. Many years later, too late for Friedkin, Sorcerer became positively reappraised, and I for one prefer it to the original version of The Wages of Fear.
How I felt about it. Loose cannon Doyle is the cinematic role model for a rogue cop. This is a man obsessed with catching the bad guys in the act, at least when he's not bedding beautiful women half his age (it is, after all, a movie). He doesn't need sleep, he doesn't care if he gets shot at, and if he has a head-on car collision, it's still all in a day's work.
Fernando Rey, best known in France for his appearances in Luis Buñuel sex comedies, is ideal as the crafty, suave villain. Devereaux (Frédéric de Pasquale) is pleasantly hapless in his turn as Rey's B-list film star mule. Rey's heavy Nicoli (Marcel Bozzuffi) is agreeable ruthless and, eventually, desperate.
One scene grates, however, and that is the cops pushing people around in a bar. It especially looks bad when the cops are white and those getting bullied are black. It should be obvious to all in the bar that Al Fann is an informant. Stressed as he is, the motorman (William Coke) is unlikely to have a heart attack. We also doubt that either Doyle or Russo could catch the younger Willie (Alan Weeks), who has a big head start.
In truth, events and characters are exaggerated throughout, although Rey and Scheider are always perfect, and Hackman is engagingly energetic. Friedkin's direction creates considerable tension, especially during Doyle's scary chase of a train in a (practically) stolen car.