''French Connection II'' is a 1975 American
action thriller film
Action film is a film genre in which the protagonist is thrust into a series of events that typically involve violence and physical feats. The genre tends to feature a mostly resourceful hero struggling against incredible odds, which include life ...
starring
Gene Hackman
Eugene Allen Hackman (born January 30, 1930) is an American retired actor and former novelist. In a career that has spanned more than six decades, Hackman has won two Academy Awards, four Golden Globes, one Screen Actors Guild Award, two BAFTAs ...
and directed by
John Frankenheimer
John Michael Frankenheimer (February 19, 1930 – July 6, 2002) was an American film and television director known for social dramas and action/suspense films. Among his credits were ''Birdman of Alcatraz'' (1962), ''The Manchurian Candidate'' (1 ...
. It is a
sequel
A sequel is a work of literature, film, theatre, television, music or video game that continues the story of, or expands upon, some earlier work. In the common context of a narrative work of fiction, a sequel portrays events set in the same ...
to the 1971
Academy Award for Best Picture
The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) since the awards debuted in 1929. This award goes to the producers of the film and is the only category ...
winner ''
The French Connection''. The film continues the story of the central character, Detective
Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle
Detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle is a fictional character portrayed by actor Gene Hackman in the films '' The French Connection'' (1971) and its sequel, '' French Connection II'' (1975), and by Ed O'Neill in the 1986 television film ''Popeye Doyle' ...
, again played by
Gene Hackman
Eugene Allen Hackman (born January 30, 1930) is an American retired actor and former novelist. In a career that has spanned more than six decades, Hackman has won two Academy Awards, four Golden Globes, one Screen Actors Guild Award, two BAFTAs ...
who won the
Academy Award for Best Actor
The Academy Award for Best Actor is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given to an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance in a leading role in a film released that year. The ...
for the first film. In the film, Doyle travels to
Marseille
Marseille ( , , ; also spelled in English as Marseilles; oc, Marselha ) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the camargue region of southern Franc ...
, France, where he is attempting to track down French drug-dealer Alain Charnier, played by
Fernando Rey
Fernando Casado Arambillet (La Coruña (Spain), 20 September 1917 – Madrid (Spain), 9 March 1994), best known as Fernando Rey, was a Spanish film, theatre, and television actor, who worked in both Europe and the United States. A suave, i ...
, who escaped at the end of the first film. Hackman and Rey are the only returning cast members.
Plot
Picking up four years after the original left off, narcotics officer
Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle
Detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle is a fictional character portrayed by actor Gene Hackman in the films '' The French Connection'' (1971) and its sequel, '' French Connection II'' (1975), and by Ed O'Neill in the 1986 television film ''Popeye Doyle' ...
(
Gene Hackman
Eugene Allen Hackman (born January 30, 1930) is an American retired actor and former novelist. In a career that has spanned more than six decades, Hackman has won two Academy Awards, four Golden Globes, one Screen Actors Guild Award, two BAFTAs ...
) is still searching for elusive drug kingpin Alain Charnier (
Fernando Rey
Fernando Casado Arambillet (La Coruña (Spain), 20 September 1917 – Madrid (Spain), 9 March 1994), best known as Fernando Rey, was a Spanish film, theatre, and television actor, who worked in both Europe and the United States. A suave, i ...
). Orders from his superiors send Doyle to
Marseille
Marseille ( , , ; also spelled in English as Marseilles; oc, Marselha ) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the camargue region of southern Franc ...
, France, to track down the criminal mastermind and bust his drug ring. Once in France, Doyle is met by English-speaking Inspector Henri Barthélémy (
Bernard Fresson
Bernard Fresson (27 May 1931 – 20 October 2002) was a French actor who primarily worked in film.
Born in Reims, France, to a French baker, Fresson attended the Lycée privé Sainte-Geneviève, majoring in law. He studied in Tania Balachova's ...
), who resents his rude and crude crimefighting demeanor. Doyle then begins to find himself as a fish out of water in France, where he is confronted with a language he cannot understand. Doyle is shown round the police station where he finds his desk is situated directly outside the toilets. He tells Barthélémy that he is not satisfied with this positioning and hopes it is not a joke at his expense. Barthélémy informs Doyle that he has read his personnel file and is aware of his reputation and especially hopes he has not brought a gun with him as it is strictly forbidden in France for visiting police officers from other countries to carry firearms.
Doyle continues to struggle with the language and tries to order drinks in a bar. He eventually makes himself understood, befriending a bartender while buying him drinks and they eventually stumble out of the bar together at closing time, followed by two men. The next day, while Doyle is watching a beach volleyball match, Charnier sees him from a restaurant below. Determined to find Charnier on his own, Popeye escapes from what are in fact French police escorts keeping watch on him. Doyle doesn't understand that he is being used as a bait by French police. The same night Charnier sends his men to capture Doyle, killing one of his watchers in the process, and take him to a secluded, seedy hotel in the old quarter for interrogation.
For several weeks, Doyle is injected with
heroin
Heroin, also known as diacetylmorphine and diamorphine among other names, is a potent opioid mainly used as a recreational drug for its euphoric effects. Medical grade diamorphine is used as a pure hydrochloride salt. Various white and brow ...
in effort to force him into capitulation. Scenes of his growing addiction follow, including one in which an elderly lady (
Cathleen Nesbitt
Cathleen Nesbitt (born Kathleen Mary Nesbitt; 24 November 18882 August 1982) was an English actress.
Biography
Born in Birkenhead, Cheshire,Before 1 April 1974 Birkenhead was in Cheshire England to Thomas and Mary Catherine (née Parry) Nesb ...
) visits him in his befuddled state. She talks to him, declaring herself to be English, and saying that her son is "just like" him, while stroking his arm. Initially she seems compassionate to his plight, but a change in the camera angle reveals her 'track' marks. The gentle old lady steals his watch.
Meanwhile, Barthélémy has sent police everywhere to search for Doyle. Charnier interrogates a needy Doyle about what he knows, but Doyle says he was sent here just because he is the only one who can recognize him. Charnier believes Doyle, so lets him go after one massive injection. Doyle is dumped barely alive but addicted in front of police headquarters. Grueling scenes of resuscitation and drug withdrawal follow. In his effort to save both Doyle's life and his reputation, Barthélémy immediately quarantines Doyle in the police cells and begins his
cold turkey
"Cold turkey" refers to the abrupt cessation of a substance dependence and the resulting unpleasant experience, as opposed to gradually easing the process through reduction over time or by using replacement medication.
Sudden withdrawal from dru ...
withdrawal from the heroin. Supervising his recovery, and at his side with both emotional support and taunts questioning his toughness, Barthélémy ensures that Doyle completes the cycle of physical withdrawal. When he is well enough to be on his feet, Doyle starts back on the road to regaining his physical fitness. He searches Marseille and, finding the hideout he was brought to, sets it on fire. He breaks into a room at the hotel and discovers Charnier's henchmen, whom he pursues and interrogates as to Charnier's whereabouts. A delivery of opium is taking place at the harbour. Doyle, Barthélémy and other inspectors rush to the boat that is being unloaded and engage Charnier's henchmen in a gun battle in a
dry dock
A dry dock (sometimes drydock or dry-dock) is a narrow basin or vessel that can be flooded to allow a load to be floated in, then drained to allow that load to come to rest on a dry platform. Dry docks are used for the construction, maintenance, ...
. The thugs open the spillways, water starts rushing in, Doyle and Barthélémy are trapped. The henchmen and a policeman are killed, but Doyle rescues Barthélémy. French police hold Doyle responsible for the policeman's death and want to send him home. But Doyle believes that the deal is not done and convinces Barthélémy, who "owes him one", to keep watch over the ship. They eventually spot the ship's captain on his way to meet Charnier's lieutenant, whom Doyle recognizes. A tailing ensues taking the police to the drug warehouse, which they raid, but are met with a barrage of fire. Doyle picks up a gun and kills a gangster machine-gunning them. Charnier's lieutenant and other men escape with the drugs on board a van, but Barthélémy closes the warehouse door and stops them. But once again Charnier has escaped. Doyle, in a foot chase of Charnier, who is sailing out of the harbor on his yacht, catches up with the boat at the end of the pier, takes his gun out of his holster, calls Charnier's name, and in the last seconds of the movie shoots him dead.
Cast
Production
John Frankenheimer had lived in France for a number of years when he agreed to make the film:
I like the script, I like the characters, I like the Hackman character in France and not speaking a word of French. It's a very difficult film because we want in no way to rip off the first one, which is one of the best films I've ever seen. I want to make a movie that stands on its own as a movie.
Frankenheimer also admitted he made the film in part because of the financial failure of ''
The Impossible Object''. "I want to make pictures that one sees", he said. "There's a great public out there and you have to reach them; otherwise you're not in the movie business."
Score
The music was composed and conducted by
Don Ellis
Donald Johnson Ellis (July 25, 1934 – December 17, 1978) was an American jazz trumpeter, drummer, composer, and bandleader. He is best known for his extensive musical experimentation, particularly in the area of time signatures. Later in his lif ...
, who returned from the original film. A soundtrack CD was released by ''
Film Score Monthly
''Film Score Monthly'' is an online magazine (and former print magazine) founded by editor-in-chief and executive producer Lukas Kendall in June 1990 in music, 1990 as ''The Soundtrack Correspondence List''. It is dedicated to the art of Film sco ...
'' in 2005 and paired with the music from the first film.
Reception
On release, ''French Connection II'' attracted positive reactions from the press and fared well at the box office, though nowhere near as well as its predecessor. The review aggregator
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
gives the film a score of 84% based on 37 reviews, and a rating average of 6.7/10.
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
of the ''
Chicago Sun-Times
The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago T ...
'' gave the film two and a half out of four stars, feeling that Doyle's heroin detox sequence halfway through the film, while well-acted by Hackman, stripped the film's momentum. He said that "if Frankenheimer and his screenplay don't do justice to the character (of
Det. Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle), they at least do justice to the genre, and this is better than most of the many cop movies that followed ''The French Connection'' into release."
Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby (July 27, 1924 – October 15, 2000) was an American film and theatre critic who served as the chief film critic for ''The New York Times'' from 1969 until the early 1990s, then its chief theatre critic from 1994 until his death in ...
wrote in his review in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', "Popeye is a colorful and interesting — though hardly noble — character, and when the Marseille drug people kidnap him, forcibly create a heroin habit in him, and then release him, you have a very special kind of jeopardy that the film and Mr. Hackman exploit most effectively."
Arthur D. Murphy of ''
Variety
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
'' called the film "an intelligent action melodrama" with a performance from Hackman that was so "excellent" as to "suggest the possibility of winning another major award for the same character in a sequel film."
Gene Siskel
Eugene Kal Siskel (January 26, 1946 – February 20, 1999) was an American film critic and journalist for the ''Chicago Tribune''. Along with colleague Roger Ebert, he hosted a series of movie review programs on television from 1975 until his d ...
of the ''
Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...
'' awarded three stars out of four and wrote, "Too many Popeye histrionics turns one of the screen's more compelling characters into a bit of a cartoon. And when Hackman is shot full of heroin by the Frenchman's thugs, once again the action is overplayed ... Despite these objections, 'French Connection II' concludes with a wallop that argues persuasively for its being seen."
Paul D. Zimmerman
Paul D. Zimmerman (July 3, 1938 in New York City, New York – March 2, 1993 in Princeton, New Jersey)Howard Schuma"Obituary: Paul D. Zimmerman" ''The Independent'', 8 March 1993 was a screenwriter, film critic and activist.
Biography
He was ...
wrote in ''
Newsweek
''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis (businessman), Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print m ...
'' that Doyle's drug addiction in the middle of the film "stalls the story" and that the action-packed climax "seems executed for those seeking the shoot-'em-up sequel that Frankenheimer apparently wanted to avoid. If the movie ultimately doesn't work, this can be said in Frankenheimer's defense: that, with every right and probably much pressure to do so, he refused to rip off 'The French Connection' as so many films with other names already had."
Charles Champlin
Charles Davenport Champlin (March 23, 1926 – November 16, 2014) was an American film critic and writer.
Life and career
Champlin was born in Hammondsport, New York. He attended high school in Camden, New York, working as a columnist for the '' ...
of the ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'' wrote, "'French Connection II' is an audience picture, bold and vigorous, opting for action rather than nuance. There is none of the lingering irony of 'French Connection I.' Vivid characterizations and plot are all, and they are whiz-bang."
Gary Arnold of ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' wrote that "this is not a sequel that was really crying to be made ... John Frankenheimer's direction of 'French Connection II' isn't bad, but it also isn't ingenious or exciting enough to compensate for the perfunctory screenwriting."
"French Connection II" earned North American rentals of $5.6 million, surpassing its $4.3 million budget. On the DVD commentary of the film, lead actor Gene Hackman remarked that the disappointing box office may have been due to the four-year gap between releases of the original and its sequel.
In 2009, ''
Empire
An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) ex ...
'' rated ''French Connection II'' to be the 19th greatest film sequel.
See also
*
List of American films of 1975
A list of American films released in 1975.
'' One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' won the Academy Award for Best Picture. The highest-grossing film of 1975 was ''Jaws''.
__TOC__
A–B
C–G
H–M
N–S
T–Z
See also
* 1975 in the Uni ...
References
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:French Connection Ii
1975 films
20th Century Fox films
American action thriller films
American crime thriller films
1970s English-language films
Films directed by John Frankenheimer
Films set in Marseille
American sequel films
Films about the French Connection
1970s action thriller films
1970s crime thriller films
American police detective films
Films scored by Don Ellis
American neo-noir films
Films about heroin addiction
1970s American films