The Connection continues the crime drama The French Connection in Marseilles rather than New York City, and in doing so it becomes the American
film’s antithesis. Set between 1975 and
the early 1980s, the 135-minute film has none of the heart-thumping car chases
of William Friedkin’s 1971 action film. Instead, it is almost flat, not in a
bad way, but in the way life generally is: we go about our daily lives, never
really knowing what will come of our decisions or chances; only in retrospect
do we realize that our successes were really failures, our disappointments
carved out opportunities, the end of the film brings us back to the
beginning. The betrayals in this film
are numerous and the double-crosses heartbreaking. Even the protagonist (the magistrate Pierre
Michel) and his antagonist (the crime boss Tany Zamba) lead lives that oddly
parallel and mirror one other. The
magistrate’s family suffers from and resent his single-minded efforts to clean
up his city, while the drug lord’s family adore him and relish the privileges
his cash-happy work provides.
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