Sunday, January 27, 2008

Poughkeepsie Picking

I decided to spend this rainy night in LA by renting THE FRENCH CONNECTION on DVD. Although the title of this flick was synonymous with "action movie" when I was a kid in the seventies, I'd never gotten around to seeing it until now.

The movie deserves its reputation as a top-notch police thriller. Although the plot is relatively simple and straightforward, scenes like the cat-and-mouse game Gene Hackman and Fernando Rey play in the subway station show a delight in the sheer magic of movie storytelling.

TFC looks fantastic on DVD. There were only two downsides to watching it. One was knowing that in the 35+ years since the movie came out, there's been little that has done what this movie did, quite as well. The other was the rain pattering down on the roof of the TV room. The rain might have added atmosphere if there had been a rainy scene in the movie. Yet despite all the grit in the film, not one drop of rain falls.

1 comment:

Alan L. Barer said...

Dan-

Are you also aware that all of illegal substance siezed was ultimately pilfered from the evidence room?

Dad