The French Connection II is another example of fantastic gritty 70’s filmmaking. John Frankenheimer took what could’ve easily been a quick cash grab of one of the best police dramas ever made, and instead created a solid sequel that manages to stand shoulder to shoulder with the original. The film sees the return of New York detective “Popeye” Jimmy Doyle (Gene Hackman) as he tracks down Alain Charnier, the drug smuggler who managed to slip away at the end of the previous film to Marseille.

Whilst the film certainly has a more melodramatic edge than its predecessor it still manages to stay relatively grounded in the style the first film set-up. John Frankenheimer retains all of the same visual rough…

Action | Crime | Drama

Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle: I'll tell you what I found out. I found out that you eat shit, you fucking frog, you! You goddamn scumbag, you!

Not up to the standards of the original, but still quite good. Gene Hackman is once again oustanding as Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle. And, I think the film missed the presence of Popeye's buddy from the first film, Roy Scheider as Cloudy.
• Story: 7/10
— Action: 7/10
— Crime: 8/10
— Drama: 7/10
• Sound: 7/10
• Acting: 8/10
• Pacing: 7/10
• Editing: 7/10
• Visuals: 7/10
• Writing: 7/10
• Dialogue: 7/10
• Directing: 7/10
• Ending Scene: 8/10
• Entertainment: 7/10
• Rewatch Value: 7/10
• Overall…

There's nothing quite like a good, gritty 70s crime movie. Part police procedural part character study, John Frankenheimer's sequel to the much acclaimed multiple Academy Award winner about Santa Clauses interested in weird foot massages in Poughkeepsie, French Connection II follows detective Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman) going after drug lord Alain Charnier, who returned to Marseille, France after the events of the first film.

The French Connection gave us one of the most intriguing and unpredictable characters in Popeye Doyle, an egomaniac who knew the ins and outs of underground New York and who happened to be a cop, a rather unorthodox one at that as well. Being a New York cop is really what keeps him together, so when…

For the purposes of this review, I will be calling this The French Connection II. Because it's always really bothered me that it's missing the 'The'. It just looks cooler with the 'The' I think. So there you have it.

The French Connection II isn't as good as I remembered it being. I've always held the opinion that it's one of the better sequels that have been made to outright classic originals. Unfortunately, this viewing revealed it to be rather unfocused and for long stretches of its running time to dispense with the main plot completely. It feels like John Frankenheimer wanted to make about three different films here.

The only really interesting one of them though is the continuation…

I want you to ask this fuck somethin'. Ask him if he ever picked his feet in Poughkeepsie.
-Popeye Doyle

I never gave this film a chance because I heard it was crap. Well I loved it. Loved seeing Popey Doyle out of his element in a really great performance by Gene Hackman. While the character was great in the original, there was barely any character development in it. Here Hackman gets the chance to play around with the character a little deeper.

While it's not as good as the original, it goes out of it's way to not copy it. It ends up being a very different film and probably one of the reasons I liked it so much.…

Master filmmaker John Frankenheimer was valiant enough to do a sequel to the masterful original. Popeye Doyle is now in Marseilles, France. The port town home to heroin kingpin Charnier. Gene is back as Popeye and Fernando Rey as frog number 1, Charnier. Popeye just walking around town, making friends with a bartender, "Jackie Daniels!", flirting with young women. The way Charnier spots Popeye on the beach from his pleasant table at a restaurant. The whole drug, detox sequences look like something Friedkin directed. Popeye was set up or what? Doesn't matter. He's gonna shake things up bad on that smooth coast town. Popeye will burn down the hotel where he was drugged and had his watch stolen. The shipyard…

I have given about 15,000 movies a Cogerson Movie Score. The French Connection is ranked 9th of all of those movies. cogersonmoviescore.com/top-100-movies-of-all-time.html The French Connection II is ranked at #4876....so needless to say I did not have high expectations for this one.

At the end of The French Connection...Hackman stopped a drug deal but the bad guy got away. French Connection II shows Hackman showing up in Marsailles as he is hot on the trail of Fernando Rey, who returns as the bad guy. The story this time is pretty weak....they should have kept Hackman's Popeye Doyle in New York City. A huge section of the movie deals with Hackman being forced into becoming a heroin addict and then his…

A brave sequel to an all-time classic that now seems largely forgotten, possibly thanks to its unrelenting grimness: it makes the first one look like, well, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms.......

Doyle is back on the trail of Frog One, this time in Marseilles and immediately Frankenheimer throws us in alongside Hackman to a city where we're instantly isolated. There's no subtitles for the huge amount of French dialogue and this sense of being utterly alone drives the plot in its entirety.

Eschewing the iconic action beats of the first film in favour of almost a character study of Doyle, as he's kidnapped and put through all manner of brutality (itself not really of the physical kind, not wishing…

One of the few examples of the sequel being better than the original. In making Popeye the victim or the bait as it were you make him more likeable, a more relatable and a character that you actually root for throughout the movie. Something that was missing in the first.

Hackman is incredible as Popeye, an American policeman in Marseille, on the job to find Charnier. He completely immerses himself in the character and you feel his detachment to all around him. This film has some incredible dark turns in it which allows Hackman to plumb the depths of his soul.

I loved the direction too. The chase scenes filmed excellently and I may be wrong about this but I…

Recorded from TV

"French Connection 2" benefits from and of course exists only because of the daringly open end of its brilliant predecessor...and thus even exploits it to a certain extent. A shot that behaves in the great uncertainty. We knew, because of the text-info that was added to the movie, that "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman) as well as his nemesis Charnier (Fernando Rey) survived, but nothing more. It remained a unique hunt with (pleasantly) unsatisfactory outcome, which will now be continued after all. After having given Doyle's former partner Russo (Roy Scheider) a kind of test-run sequence with the spin-off "The Seven-Ups", the courage to give a five-time Oscar winner and milestone of New Hollywood a true sequel was…

Four years after the original release of “The French Connection” Gene Hackman returns as the ever-tough no-nonsense detective ‘Popeye’ Doyle and is only one of two stars that returned for the sequel (that also being Fernando Rey).
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The sequel actually sees Detective Doyle go to France to try and bring “The Frog” to justice, with the film being set entirely in France, which is a bit underheard of for American made films especially in the 1970s. “The French Connection II” is a pretty solid continuous of the first instalment, and I rather liked the whole “lost in translation” theme of the film (mainly because I had no subtitles on when they spoke in French, so I felt as confused…