Monday, Jun. 02, 1975

Leap Frog

By JAY COCKS

FRENCH CONNECTION II

Directed by JOHN FRANKENHEIMER Screenplay by ALEXANDER JACOBS and ROBERT and LAURIE DILLON

There was some unfinished business at the end of The French Connection. In fact, the unfinished business seemed just the point: that the French dope dealer so passionately pursued by the American cops could slip smoothly away through a massive stakeout and leave the country. The Frenchman was the source connection responsible for bringing in vast quantities of heroin from Marseille to New York. Frog One, Popeye Doyle called him, and the fact that he could get away nearly unruffled, meant simply that the law could never catch up with the main man.

It made a good object lesson but a slightly unsatisfying ending. French Connection II gives Popeye Doyle another shot, a real fighting chance at his nemesis. Allowing for the arguable proposition that any sequel was necessary, French Connection His one that is tough, shrewd and fast. The movie is exciting, even frightening, but never loses its strong naturalistic grip. It also represents the most assured work its director John Frankenheimer has done since Seconds in 1966.

Gene Hackman is back behind the badge as Popeye Doyle. Comparisons with his initial appearance as Doyle are inevitable, especially since Hackman won the Oscar for that part the first time around. Here he is even better because the role has been extended and made a little more difficult. In French Connection II, Doyle is shipped over to Marseille complete with ankle gun and porkpie hat, a regular good-will ambassador from New York's finest. "I'd rather be a lamp post in New York than the President of France," he snarls at his Gallic counterpart (Bernard Fresson), who is supposed to cooperate with Doyle's mis sion: to run Frog One to ground.

The French cops know something Doyle does not. They are aware that he has been set up, that the French and American police forces are using him as a decoy to flush out Charnier (Fer nando Rey), the connection. The plan gets messy, however, when Charnier and his people sap Doyle in the street and drag him off to a seedy hotel, where for three long weeks they shoot him full of dope.

When they finally dump him in front of police headquarters, Doyle is a heavy junkie.

Cold Turkey. The middle portion of the movie shows Doyle trying to go cold turkey, and it is here that Hackman does some of his finest work. Many actors have tried to get under a junk ie's skin, but when Hack man weighs in, the subject might as well never have come up before. He gets it all: the desperation, the gargoyle fantasies, the sickness and the terror.

The movie is a fairly brutal character study up until the time Popeye finally, albeit tenuously, shakes off his habit. Then, as Doyle goes out for revenge, Frankenheimer changes gear smoothly into the sort of supercharged action adventure that gives memories of the original French Connection some stiff competition. Doyle and his French al lies track Charnier's minions to the ship yards, where they start a shooting match that ends with the threat of the cops getting drowned like water rats and Doyle getting crushed under the keel of a freighter. It is a flamboyant sequence, intended to top the car chase in the first Connection. Whether it does or not, no one will be disappointed.

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