The French Connection

The French Connection is sort of in a weird position with regard to its legacy and how well it holds up. On one hand, it fits right in with a lot of more modern thrillers and crime stories, because it was a really early example of the super gritty way of doing that, with a down to earth and believable style and blunt depictions of its adult content. But on the other hand, some of the impact of that is lost because it's become such an obvious way to do these kinds of stories. The shock of seeing movies made this way is lost when it's so common now. A victim of its own influence. It's still a very good movie, but it was probably amazing 40 years ago. Back then it was showing a dark side of New York no one had ever seen before, but now it looks completely familiar to anyone who's ever played Grand Theft Auto IV. Today I wouldn't pick it as a better film from that year than A Clockwork Orange, but I can see how it was definitely more important.

The film is based on the true story of two narcotics cops in New York uncovering a heroin pipeline from France to their own city, slowly over the course of a few months, as they follow suspicious characters, listen to hours of taped conversations, and gradually connect the dots in a large criminal conspiracy. It's basically like a mini-season of The Wire, and as a bonus it's all basically real. Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider are essentially playing real people, only slightly fictionalized versions of the real cops, and they both happen to be outstanding in the movie. Hackman won an Oscar playing Popeye Doyle, and it's here that he created his tough-guy persona that he's used on occasion to great effect for years. A lot of the movie is fairly sedate, but things always have a chance to get dangerous when Doyle's around, and the film does happen to have a pretty outstanding action scene added near the end. It only exists because a producer mandated that they add a chase that outdoes Bullitt, but it's a unique and exciting scene that doesn't match the technical superiority of more modern chases but in some ways manages to thrill more, and it's just a great sequence from start to finish. The ending is surprising in its ambiguity and lack of triumph, but it definitely works for the story they were telling. It's a movie about the real world, and from that perspective it seems like a total success.

Jaws

If nothing else, Jaws deserves credit for creating the summer blockbuster, a kind of film that maybe isn't always as good as it could be but which has become increasingly important to the movie industry. And while many such blockbusters are derided by critics, Jaws itself is certainly a fine piece of filmmaking by Steven Spielberg. There's nothing too complex at work here (it's also cited for the rise of "high concept" stories that don't take a lot of explanation), it's a mix of horror and adventure elements as a gigantic shark terrorizes the shores of an island town that relies on summer tourism to stay afloat and gets pursued by a ragtag crew of men from different walks of life. This was back when PG films were allowed to be scary and bloody, and there's some nicely gruesome and occasionally frightening scenes setting up the danger before the more interesting second half, which after a certain point takes place entirely in the middle of the ocean.

To me the highlight of the movie is the performances of the three main characters. Roy Scheider is the chief of police on the island, and is wracked with guilt after town officials prevent him from closing the beaches after the first attack and more people get killed. Richard Dreyfuss is an oceanographer from a rich family convinced that the town doesn't know what it's doing. And Robert Shaw is an old grizzled war veteran and sea captain convinced of his own ability to stop the shark. The supporting cast is just less interesting, and once they finally leave shore to kill the beast, the film really starts to shine. Their personalities clash and an odd sort of camaraderie forms as they slowly realize the true size and danger of their target. The film is infamous for how poorly the mechanical sharks they had worked and how Spielberg had to basically work around it the whole time to great effect, and it's funny how things like screw-ups in filming could even save characters from death. But the scenes of the three guys trying to bring the shark in are still incredibly exciting and tense 35 years later, all the way up to the dubious but thrilling conclusion. A simple movie elevated by the creativity of those behind the camera and the great character work by those in front of it.

The Punisher

I watched The Punisher knowing it didn't have a good reputation, but still hoping it would be a decent revenge movie. Unfortunately, the decent revenge stuff was hampered by a hard-to-like protagonist and one of the worst initial premises I've ever seen in a film. The original Punisher comic started with a normal guy named Frank Castle's family getting killed after they witness a gang execution, and him taking the law into his own hands. Not terribly brilliant, but it works. What happens in the movie does not work. Castle is an ex-soldier and undercover FBI agent, and after a gun deal he oversees goes south and a dumb criminal gets killed, his dad played by John Travolta (who's completely unconvincing as a ruthless gangster) decides to take it out Frank and his entire family. This obviously makes no sense since he was hardly responsible for what happened and killing a lawman and his extended family would result in a huge crackdown from the government, though fortunately for him it never happens for no reason and Frank Castle has to... yep, take the law into his own hands.

I could go on about how terrible this opening is, but there are other things I have to cover like how Frank's neighbors in his new slum apartment are annoying and add little to the story, how Frank's kind of a giant dick who pathologically lies to his son (before he dies) and gets a bit too sadistic with his actions when he claims to be only punishing criminals rather than getting revenge, and how inept everyone Travolta sends after our less-than-intrepid hero is. Hired assassins announce their intentions and show up at his heavily fortified apartment completely unarmed, packs of goons fail to make sure he's dead (which guarantees he'll survive) and search for him effectively, if you don't pay attention it might be a pretty enjoyable action movie, but once you do it falls apart like it was held together with chewing gum.

I did enjoy the eventual punishment for the most part, although it was hard to stomach what happens to Travolta's wife with Castle not being aware that she probably deserves it and essentially doing to the bad guys exactly what they did to him. I've been watching Hung and like Thomas Jane quite a bit on that, but he can't do a whole lot with what he has here. He was given a tough road to hoe with the material, and try as he might he just can't make Frank likable. Really, the cast isn't terrible at all, but nobody in the film comes off very well. You have to lay the blame on the director and writers. They changed the details of the origin for no reason and definitely for the worse, and fail to make anybody sympathetic on top of that. It wasn't awful, but it really didn't do anything well enough to make it worth seeing.