Highlights:
Lowlights:
- The ending, my god. Plus a half tick in my rating for that.
- The street scenes. The film absolutely immerses us in 1971 New York, and director William Friedkin effortlessly blends well-framed shots with those that show us seamy street life as it is.
- The tension in those chase scenes. The pace of the film is great, showing patience in long stakeouts but gradually working its way up to a crescendo during the pursuits. The cat and mouse game in the subway is fantastic, as is the car chase following the elevated train.
- Great storytelling. The plot is tight and while we may not always believe some of the events, they're credible and there aren't giant plot holes or irrelevant subplots. The criminals are pretty clever too, and the car teardown searching for where the drugs might be was great.
- The nuance in the lead detective (Gene Hackman). He initially comes across as an idealized view of the gritty, macho cop, even though he's got some serious issues (see lowlights). However, as it plays out, he's not idolized as characters like Dirty Harry, and is instead shown as being as obsessed and out of control as Captain Ahab, and in a subtle, smart way by Friedkin.
- Hey, isn't it nice that the country the drugs are coming in from, what a moron might call a s***hole country, is France? Apparently that's where most of the Heroin came into America from at the time, and there's a lesson in there somewhere.
Lowlights:
- The treatment of African-Americans. Hackman is toxic towards them early on, quipping "never trust a n*****," and also aggressively shaking them down. His partner (Roy Scheider) points out in the first instance that the person he's talking about could have been white, but none of this part of what he does is truly challenged. We can say this is what makes Hackman a real person and an anti-hero, but unfortunately I think filmgoers probably saw this as part of the positive side of him.
- I also get the 'get tough on crime' vibe from this film, and shudder a little over the direction this would take the country in over the following decades. 'Dirty Harry' was made in the same year, and both films show the frustrations Americans had with drug use and violent crime in cities, so part of it understandable. The overreaction that this film advocates, though in a more indirect way, seems to be police brutality and much stiffer sentences, both of which would balloon into real problems in the decades which followed.