Release Year: 1971

Genre: Action, Crime, Drama

Director: William Friedkin

Writer: Ernest Tidyman, Robin Moore (novel)

Stars: Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider, Fernando Rey

Already blown through all seven installments of The Fast & the Furious franchise and still thirsting for speed? 

We suggest taking in car chase cinema's granddaddy supreme: The French Connection.

Released by Twentieth Century Fox in 1971 and set on the gritty streets of pre-Giuliani NYC, this movie follows a Brooklyn detective named Popeye (Gene Hackman) hoping to make a big drug arrest after hearing that a big heroin shipment is coming over from France. This entire movie is one long chase sequence, as Popeye and his partner follow hunches and clues all over the city, often tailing the bad guys behind the wheel and on foot.

But the most famous chase—the thing that really put The French Connection on the map—comes when Popeye grabs a random person's car in hot pursuit of a criminal who has hijacked a New York City subway train. 

Yep, we're looking at a seven-minute car vs. train chase.

The French Connection may be light on special effects, but it pushes real-world resources right to the edge.

And that sweat equity paid off, when its makers turned a 1.8 million dollar budget into over twenty-five times that in box-office sales. Plus, it won producer Phillip d'Antoni an Academy Award Best Picture, a Best Director for William Friedkin (whose next film would be The Exorcist), and a Best Actor for Gene Hackman, along with a Best Adaptation and a Best Editing. 

Not too shabby for a movie who's idea of high fashion is a Heisenberg-esque pork-pie hat.

But in case you don't like car vs. train chases or Academy Award winning epic movies (in which case, what movies do you even like?!) there's another reason to watch this film: it's all based on a true story. Yup; it's all chronicled in a book (also called The French Connection) written by author Robin Moore about the then-biggest heroin bust in the U.S.

Known best for his work about war, law enforcement, and the drug trade, Moore put together his narrative-style book using interviews, police documents, and exhaustive fact checking. 

No awesome car vs. train chase sequences, but we'll take it.

How do you feel about epic car chases? You love them? Watch The French Connection.

How do you feel about gritty cop dramas? You love them? Watch The French Connection.

And how do you feel about anti-heroes that make Tony Soprano and Walter White look like goody-goodies? You love them? Watch The French Connection.

But even if you don't like those things (in which case, check your forehead. Are you feeling okay? What's wrong with you?) this movie is still totally worth settling in for. It's remained a classic since it hit the cinemas in 1970, and is now a kind of early-70's period piece, showing us a time where heroin flooded the New York streets nearly unchecked, and cops screamed, yelled, and roughed up pretty much anyone they wanted to.

Twenty years before Rodney King, and forty years before the police brutality watershed moment of the 2010's, French Connection cops carry themselves with a very different kind of rep. It's a world where racist and sexist epithets get thrown and no one bats an eye.

And can totally be uncomfy for a modern viewer… but that's kind of the point. We're not supposed to root for racist powder-keg Popeye Doyle: we're supposed to be riveted by what a thoroughly nasty dude he is. He's supposed to be a "good" guy, but Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle is no sweetie pie. Instead of getting power from spinach, he gets it from booze and he has weakness for dames in boots.

And the "bad" guys that Popeye & Co are fighting? Sure, drugs are against the law and perpetuate systems of oppression and poverty. But these dealers are slick and fun, and hang out in high-steeze suits and pretty cars.

This ethical gray-space, where viewers can switch allegiances from cop to drug dealer, from American to French, and from scene-to-scene, is part of what makes this movie so perversely fun to watch. It's an antidote to Batman, Superman, Ironman—all those dudes with their sure moral compasses and that fight on the side of right and only battle the baddest baddies.

In The French Connection, the good guys ain't so good, and the bad guys ain't so bad. And in that way, we think this movie is a lot like everyday life… with a few extra car chase sequences thrown in for good measure.