The French Connection (1971)

The film opens in Marseilles with a policeman staking out Alain Charnier, a French criminal who ostensibly works as a former stevedore-turned-shipping executive but is in fact involved in smuggling heroin from France to the United States. The French policeman is eventually assassinated by Charnier's henchman, Pierre Nicoli.

In New York City, detectives "Popeye" Doyle and "Cloudy" Russo are also performing an undercover stakeout, with Doyle dressed as Santa Claus and Russo pretending to be a hot dog stand operator. Eventually the suspect they are waiting for makes a break for it, and the detectives pursue him on foot. After catching up with their suspect, the detectives aggressively interrogate the man and eventually force him to reveal where his "connection" is based.

At the nightclub they go to, Doyle becomes interested in two people: Sal Boca and his beautiful young wife, Angie. Doyle persuades his partner to come along as they tail the couple; several scenes are shown establishing the fact that although the Bocas run a modest newsstand/diner, their extravagant lifestyle indicates they may be involved in some sort of criminal activity. Eventually there is a link established between the Bocas and a well-to-do person named Joel Weinstock, who is rumored to have extensive connections in the narcotics underworld. Doyle and Russo then roust an African American bar in Bedford Stuyvesant where the majority of the patrons are in possession of low quality marijuana and other minor drugs. The rousting is a stunt for Doyle to find an informant whom he then questions about an apparent shortage of hard drugs on the street; Doyle is told that there is word a major shipment of heroin is on its way. The detectives convince their supervisor, Simonson, to pursue wiretapping the Bocas' phones and use several ruses to try to obtain more information on their subjects.

Charnier soon "makes" Doyle and decides he has to be eliminated. Charnier's henchman Nicoli offers to do the job and tries to kill Doyle from a rooftop with a rifle. However, he botches the job and a cat-and-mouse pursuit begins, which eventually leads up to the car chase. The chase ends when the elevated train Nicoli has hijacked crashes into another train; when Doyle catches up with Nicoli, he shoots Nicoli in the back .

The car containing the drugs that Devereaux imported into the U.S. is eventually staked out by the police and impounded when some young thieves try to strip the car of its' valuables. Doyle and Russo then rip the car apart in an hours-long search, before eventually finding the narcotics after the mechanic states that he has stripped everything on the car except the rocker panels.

The drug deal has been a major success; Boca and Weinstock's resident heroin expert tests the substance and declares it to be of top quality. In return, using an old car that Sal Boca's brother Lou picked out, the criminals stash the money in almost the same hiding place that was used on the car Devereaux brought in. Charnier and Sal Boca drive off and only moments later run into a roadblock consisting of a large force of police officers, led by Doyle. The police chase Charnier and Sal Boca back to the factory grounds, where Sal is killed during a shootout with the police and almost all of the others surrender after tear gas is used by the police.

Charnier escapes into the warehouse and a tense sequence ensues as Doyle hunts Charnier down. Russo joins him in the search, which takes a sudden shocking turn as Doyle, trigger-happy and high on adrenaline, sees a shadowy figure in the distance and empties his pistol at it only a split-second after shouting a warning. To Russo's horror, the man Doyle kills is not Charnier, but Mulderig. Doyle seems unfazed by this and vows to capture Charnier, reloading his pistol and running off into another room in the distance. The last sound heard in the film is a single gunshot.

Title cards before the closing credits note that of the people arrested and tried, only Joel Weinstock and Angie Boca got away without any prison time. Alain Charnier was never found or tried in the U.S. It also states that both Doyle and Russo were transferred out of the narcotics division.

Famous Quotations :

Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle: You dumb guinea.
Buddy "Cloudy" Russo: How the hell was I supposed to know he had a knife.
Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle: Never trust a nigger.
Buddy "Cloudy" Russo: He could have been white.
Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle: Never trust anyone!

source : wikipedia | imdb