Just watched "The French Connection" for the first time since I was a kid

[ForrestGump]

Excellent stuff, and it's held up perfectly. Of course, anything with Gene Hackman in it is good just by virtue of his presence -- he's one of those actors -- but this was a great film.

And that famous car chase, the one that was really a car-train chase...wow. Like the one from Bullit, it holds up well today even in the wake of such stellar automotive spectacles as seen in The Blues Brothers, Ronin, the Bourne movies with Matt Damon, and others. I don't know what kind of car Popeye was driving, but I feel sorry for the dude he commandeered it from. That innovatively shot and designed chase was one of the standards for the film industry and still remains so.

Apparently, one of the car crashes in the chase was unplanned...they didn't close the streets for filming and some dude who was on his way to work and didn't know that there was filming going on got nailed.

Cool film!

And it's cool to see those groovy early-'70s fashions and afros... :D


Oops! They compensated him for destroying his car

[GOPisEvil]

1. It was a Pontiac Le Mans, I believe.

You're right though, that movie does hold up surprisingly well. In fact, if modern costuming was CGI'd onto the actors, you might think it was just made. Nice dramatization of some true events.