In honor of legendary actor Gene Hackman’s 88th birthday, we’re screening the classic and one of cinema’s finest gritty New York cop films, The French Connection (1971). There are only a few films that capture the hard edge era of the Big Apple’s streets during that time and The French Connection is in the top 3 and top 2 car chase scenes in cinema history. Based on Robin Moore’s 1969 non-fiction book The French Connection: A True Account of Cops, Narcotics, and International Conspiracy. It tells the story of New York Police Department detectives Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle and Buddy “Cloudy” Russo, whose real-life counterparts were Narcotics Detectives Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso, in pursuit of wealthy French heroin smuggler Alain Charnier. The film stars Gene Hackman as Popeye and co-stars Roy Scheider as Cloudy.
Grab your snacks and pop, sit back and watch Popeye Doyle in action!