Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Direction, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Supporting Actor

Chasing down punks on the streets of New York is what Detective Popeye Doyle does. Surrounded by director Friedkin's grim metro realism, Popeye (played with buggy passion by Gene Hackman) is in his element grabbing gutter-level lunks, until he comes upon “Frog #1,” a coolly corporate kingpin who's smuggling H into the U.S. Obsessed by this unflinching Frenchman (Fernando Rey), Doyle soon realizes that evil pursued can be elusive-it's easier to find it in yourself. Propelled by a nervy street-smart camera, one of cinema's greatest car chases, and adrenalin-injected editing, The French Connection is better than a mainline rush.