Fox's Blu-ray looks okay; it isn't as sharp and pristine as The French Connection, but it's also minus the distracting "enhancements" of that release. Several very good extras nudge this into moderately recommended territory.

After the Charnier character's escape from New York*, Eddie Egan, the real-life basis for Popeye Doyle, went to France hoping to extradite the infamous smuggler, Jean Jehan (the basis for Rey's character), but found the French government utterly uncooperative. Jehan fought the Nazis in the French Resistance during the war, and later helped Charles de Gaulle get elected president. Jehan was never extradited, and died peacefully in his own bed.

The movie plays out somewhat differently. Doyle is similarly met by uncooperative French authorities, but that's because they're setting him up, revealed in clumsy voice-over: Doyle's bosses in New York want to use him as bait, hoping Charnier's assassins will lead French police to Charnier's heroin labs. (This is not believable. Why wouldn't they tell him of their plan when there's every indication he'd happily comply?) Unaware of this, a bored and frustrated Doyle eludes two detectives assigned to tail him, just as Charnier's men make their move and kidnap him, porkpie hat and all. At a crummy hotel they shoot him full of heroin and get him hooked hoping he'll spill his guts about French and American intelligence on the infamous smuggler.

French Connection II takes Doyle out of his element, and as a fish out of water in France he becomes merely a disagreeable Ugly American tourist, barking at everyone in English and rolling his eyes with impatience when no one understands him. The presence of Popeye's partner, "Cloudy" (Roy Scheider), is sorely missed; Doyle's affection for Cloudy humanized him, no matter that Doyle's a bigot and a hothead. He's got little use for the French police and their rules and they for him. (Amusingly, with other cops he casually refers to Charnier as "Frog 1." In France. To other Frenchmen.) Tagging along with opposite number Barthélémy (Bernard Fresson) on a big bust, iconoclast Popeye criticizes their methods and is directly responsible for an undercover officer's murder.

With no authority and denied the use of a gun (though he's smuggled a pistol into the country), Doyle can do little but wander around Marseilles aimlessly, and the first third of the picture is exactly that: aimless. Once held hostage and pumped full of drugs, French Connection II's story stops cold and the middle-third of the film becomes a showcase for Gene Hackman's acting and little else. After going cold turkey in Barthélémy's dungeon-like jail, Doyle finally makes his move and the film picks up steam, albeit too little, too late.

There's not much to French Connection II, which resembles an Italian-made crime thriller more than its predecessor. The script adds very little new insight into Doyle's character, and even less to Fernando Rey's, who here comes off as a conventional drug kingpin type. Bernard Fresson, forever typecast as police inspectors - he played a similar role in the much-superior Charles Bronson-Alain Delon Honor Among Thieves, for instance - is okay but unmemorable. Ancient character actress Cathleen Nesbitt appears as a heroin-addicted old lady in a room adjacent to Doyle's; Frankenheimer's camera rather distastefully emphasizes her horribly gnarled arthritic hands.

Frankenheimer, seemingly an excellent choice for this material, adds little to the film. His direction seems disinterested - point-and-shoot. Reportedly he worked on the script uncredited, which surprisingly lacks perspective and depth. The film is blandly told third-person so that when Doyle's kidnapped, drugged, and isolated, the film simply observes Doyle's plight dispassionately, and with frequent cutaways to the dragnet in search of him, which only denies the audience the chance to share in Doyle's agony and uncertainty. A big action set-piece, with Barthélémy and Doyle shooting it out with the bad guys only to find themselves trapped in a massive dry-dock Charnier's men suddenly flood, isn't pieced together well. The layout isn't properly established and the editing is ineffectual.

Somewhat better is the seedy atmosphere Frankenheimer captures, and a few good scenes that indulge Hackman and his character. The heroin-addiction scenes play almost like an actor's exercise, but other extended sequences, such as Doyle's efforts to buy a drink at a café-bar (and pick up a pair of amused women) are well-done.

Video & Audio

French Connection II is a 1080p, 50GB disc billed at 1.85:1 but actually 1.78:1. The title elements and other opticals are on the soft side, but the rest of the film looks okay, though a step down from the fine look of The French Connection pre-Friedkin's changes.

Like The French Connection, there are numerous audio and subtitle options, though attempts to remix the sequel in stereo is much less successful, and ultimately I preferred the original 1.0 mono track. The disc defaults to a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio mix; Spanish and French mono tracks are also included, and optional subtitles in English, Spanish, Mandarin, and Cantonese. The disc is closed-captioned and region-encoded "A." A D-Box Motion Control Systems feature is included.

Extra Features

As with The French Connection, French Connection II carries over supplementary material from a September 2001 DVD release, notably an audio commentary by John Frankenheimer (we can be grateful he recorded tracks for almost all his major films before he died) and a separate commentary with Gene Hackman and producer Robert Rosen.

New to Blu-ray is a wonderful half-hour documentary, Frankenheimer: In Focus, a high-def show that highlights this and Black Sunday (1977), another Fox title, but touches upon his early television work and films (including high-def clips from The Manchurian Candidate and The Train), and his late-career success and return to television (including excerpts from Ronin). William Friedkin, Ed Lauter, Bruce Dern and Frankenheimer's daughter and widow, the former actress Evans Evans, are among the interviewees. It's a great show, playing like it wants to be (and should have!) been a full-on feature length career retrospective. Gene Hackman is back for another Conversation, in which he's insightful and honest about the film's production and the final result. High-def trailers for French Connection II and The French Connection, and a still gallery round out the package.

Parting Thoughts

Though disappointing, French Connection II deserves points for trying to move in a new direction rather than simply regurgitate or try to top the first film. On its own terms, French Connection II is pretty weak, but paired - and contrasted - with the first film, and for its above-average extra features, this is Recommended.

* Two nice touches: In French Connection II Charnier explains he bribed a large number of policemen to get away, and the audience also learns that the 120 pounds of seized heroin was stolen from police headquarters, right from under their noses - further expressions of the original film's cynicism.

Film historian Stuart Galbraith IV's latest book, The Toho Studios Story, is on sale now.