Author: Christian Sauvé

  • Death on the Nile (2022)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Disney Streaming, April 2022) Are we so starved for a murder mystery that even an average entry in the genre would earn attention and a mild recommendation? Well, yes – and while there’s plenty to say about Death on the Nile’s faults, the result is still a watchable, even occasionally charming piece of old-school mystery executed with lavish modern means. Second in a series of Hercules Poirot films from writer-director-star Kenneth Branagh adapting Agatha Christie’s novels, it takes Poirot and an ensemble cast of characters up and down the Nile for a series of murders on the honeymoon cruise of a rich couple. If you’re familiar with the 1970s version of the story, you may still have a few surprises here: An added framing device has been added to give more depth to Poirot (largely wasted, as it’s not really important, and the moustache bit stolen from The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp doesn’t make visual sense); some characters have been combined and, most strikingly, the visual polish of the film has been boosted by near-omnipresent CGI effects. Branagh is still quite good as Poirot, but the ensemble cast has its ups and downs. Gal Gadot gets the aristocratic thing down pat and Sophie Okonedo is quite striking as a jazz singer, but the long delays between the film’s pre-Covid production and its post-peak-pandemic release mean that two performers had the time to get into dumb personal scandals along the way – While Armie Hammer’s role is small enough that we can ignore his cannibalistic fetish, I would have liked Letitia Wright’s performance had she not proven herself to be an anti-vax wackadoodle in the meantime. Still, even with its clunky moments and overlong running time, Death on the Nile at least gets the basics of an old-fashioned murder mystery right: the atmosphere (despite the unrealism of the CGI), the cast of interesting characters, the sense of a closed-off environment, the accumulating deaths, and the final confrontation with all the suspects (even if the film wrongly sees it as appropriate to have Poirot threaten everyone with a gun). Compared to the 1970s version, it’s both more visually interesting and more meandering. But in 2022, considering the regrettable death of murder mysteries (a hunger merely whetted by such successes as Knives Out and Murder on the Orient Express), even a mildly successful example of the genre such as Death on the Nile can be quite satisfying to watch. While there were doubts that such a film would lead to further sequels in the Disney portfolio, it now looks as if a third film is planned. Why not – especially if Branagh and Okonedo can be back for more.

  • The Hospital (1971)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) There’s a mordant wit at play in The Hospital’s satirical take on big medicine that still resonates fifty years later. From the opening moments, where a night tryst between hospital employees leads to an accidental death, it’s clear that legendary screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky is after a very dark kind of comedy, voluble dialogue and world-weary tone. George C. Scott is the anchor of the film, as he plays a chief of medicine progressively dismayed at the dumb medical errors claiming the lives of several doctors. At least the escalating comedy of errors offers a respite from a personal life in shambles – perhaps the funniest joke of the film being that the investigation in so many deaths is the one thing postponing his own suicide. There’s an admirable craft in the way The Hospital’s script is put together, with very credible dialogue butting head with an incredible series of unlikely events, several character moments and dark humour often given form through narration. But I’d be careful in talking about The Hospital as being all that modern – you can see many bits and pieces of irritating Hollywood conventions poking here and there, most notably the cliché of the older protagonist being given a zest for life through an affair with a significantly younger woman. There are also a few lengthy sequences as the film struggles to keep a handle on its unwieldy tone, some showy self-conscious moments and a conclusion that doesn’t quite make everything click together. Still, it’s often a joy to listen to, and the irreverent way it portrays medical professionals feels in line with more recent takes on the fallibility of Big Medicine. The Hospital is perhaps a bit too scattered to be completely compelling, but it’s distinctive even today, and it still features a few chuckles of gallows humour.

  • Spinning Man (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, April 2022) It’s perfectly acceptable to watch mediocre films if the cast is interesting, and in Spinning Man’s favour, you do get Guy Pearce and Pierce Brosnan sparring as (respectively) a man suspected of murder and a slightly-too-dogged detective. On the distaff side, you have both an evergreen favourite in Minnie Driver and a rising star in Alexandra Shipp. But casting may be the film’s best and sole asset, because the rest of the story (not very well adapted from a novel) is designed for frustration, but then goes on to compound its foundational issue with even more unforced problems. The situation, as we understand it, is that our protagonist (Pearce) is a philandering husband whose fondness for young women ideally fits his job as a philosophy teacher, with a resumé that consequently includes a suspicious transfer from one school to another. When an ex-student of his goes missing, the detective has plenty of clues to suggest he’s involved. But here’s the thing: Spinning Man isn’t really interested in a conventional murder mystery. It’s one of those films more interested in meditations about memory, guilt, truth and perception. It dumps a load of red herrings on the viewer, pulls the rug of conventional murder mysteries from under them, and makes a little victory dance of having fooled everyone. It’s one of those movies-as-elaborate-game things, which only works if the viewer is interested in playing. I’m sure someone, somewhere, gets where the film was going with its multiple false leads, denial of a crime and imaginary sequences – probably the novelist, maybe the screenwriter, not necessarily the director. By the end of it, Spinning Man is more likely to feel tedious than anything else—OK, so you lay out the groundwork for a murder mystery, but then proudly claim to not care about it? Fine, here’s me claiming that I don’t care about the results either. I’m not completely disappointed in the film – there’s a nice slightly-gloomy small-town college atmosphere, and the four main actors are well worth watching in their own way. But while I see Spinning Man make elaborate pretentious gestures, I’m not really invested enough to make even the slightest effort to go beyond a surface level read of the film, where it intentionally fails at satisfaction.

  • What Men Want (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2022) This is going to sound reactionary (and I’ll assume the consequences for it), but I find it striking that when telepathy comedy What Women Want came out back in 2000, it was seen as an attempt (however imperfect) to make the pressures imposed on modern women more understandable to men, effectively becoming a film about female empowerment. So, logically, a gender-flipped remake called What Men Want should take a look at the pressures affecting modern men and make them understandable to women, right, right? Haha, of course not – Even in following a woman who can hear men’s thoughts, the script has been rejigged so that the female protagonist gets everything she wants from overhearing evil men’s evil thoughts. There is no exploration of modern masculinity here – a few jokes about what men don’t want others to know (including a closeted gay male, naturally) but otherwise the deck is rigged against our female protagonist and the mind-reading thing is about her triumphing over the (misogynistic, discriminatory, racist, sexist, systematically oppressive, etc.) system. As usual in gender-flipping premises, there’s no real pretence at equality here – it’s blunt-force male critique without nuance, subtlety or even compassion. Maybe we’ll get to something looking like true equality in a few decades. Given that this review is so far right out of the reactionary right-wing playbook (I swear I’m progressive… but I get annoyed sometimes – in a world moving away from unipolar white maleness, equality is a multi-way street), you could be forgiven for assuming that I disliked What Men Want. But I actually didn’t – it’s hard to resist Taraji P. Henson when she’s in full outsized-personality mode, as she is here playing a sports agent with difficult clients. While What Men Want sports the broadcast-by-BET-channel stamp, this film is a full step above the (rather endearing) low-budget made-for-BET movies that regularly air on the channel – it’s got decent production values, an acceptable script (notwithstanding the previous 200 words of cranky kvetching), name actors and a sufficient budget to meet its ambitions. It’s rough on the edges, but the dialogue occasionally has a good quip or two. The pacing is controlled well, and even a few dumb script tendencies (such as over-explaining what’s happening, or being suspicious convenient as to when our protagonist can or can’t hear men’s thoughts) aren’t enough to extinguish the overall good fun of the exercise. This is meant to be a comedy, after all, and it nails the breezy tone essential for it. Erykah Badu seems to be having a ton of fun playing a psychic with some psychedelic assistance, while director Adam Shankman is an old hand at keeping it all under control even if some odd extraneous subplots still distract from the core of it. While I do have a lot to say about What Men Want’s shortcomings, it’s pleasant enough to watch – but don’t expect anything particularly memorable. Well, except for the wedding scene.

  • Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) Some movies you almost like, such as Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round. A film that features James Coburn as a conman/thief in the middle of a mid-1960s caper is a hard proposal to refuse. But despite some promising elements and a great deal of charisma from Coburn (alongside co-stars such as Aldo Ray and Camilla Sparv), the film doesn’t rise up to its potential. Yes, there’s Coburn romancing several beautiful women (not necessarily a characteristic that has aged well), a heist that involves the visit of the Premier of the Soviet Union in Los Angeles and a wonderfully ironic finale, but it’s all a bit laborious and unfocused (the action moves from Boston to Los Angeles) and not quite as lighthearted as it could have been. Most modern reviews of the film don’t fail to mention Harrison Ford’s brief screen debut as a bellhop discussing phone matters with Coburn – it’s that kind of film ripe for a walk-on scene stealer. (To be clear: Harrison isn’t particularly remarkable, but neither is the film.)  Well-done heist movies feel as if they’re the easiest thing to put together, but a lot of work and wit are required to create something that flows gracefully, and writer-director Bernard Girard can’t quite get the mixture correctly: While the misogyny of the film now feels much worse than it must have back then, it betrays an unbalanced ratio between toughness and humour that simply keeps Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round on the ground when it should be flying away. No amount of Coburn charm and lovely actresses can compensate for that.

  • Playmates (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) Alas, I’m getting to the end of the Kay Kyser filmography. Kyser was a most unlikely movie star – a bookish band leader who parlayed success as an entertaining radio show host into a short-lived but substantial movie career spanning thirteen titles (nine of them feature films) in merely six years, playing himself in all but one of those films. Kyser had a distinctive, almost underwhelming screen presence – an academician somehow presented as a leading man. One of Playmates’ biggest assets is how it plays on this dichotomy, overtly presenting Kyser as someone in need of acting lessons and positive news stories. The other asset of the film is his co-star – American acting legend John Barrymore in his last film, playing a bombastic caricature of himself as a puffed-up thespian reduced to giving acting lessons to Kyser. Their water-and-oil mixture powers much of the film as Barrymore chews scenery under Kyser’s amused stares. Additional entertainment comes both from Lupe Velez in her usual scene-stealing fiery persona and the usual Kyser acolytes (notably bowl-haired Ish Kabibble, accompanied by attractive Ginny Simms as his band’s assigned lead singer). But the more you know about the players involved, the more there’s a tragic undertone to Playmates – after all, both Barrymore and Velez would be dead a few years later (for different reasons) and Barrymore fans usually wince at the thought of his last film being spent playing second fiddle to Kyser and parodying his own tattered image. But on a surface level, Playmates does get a few laughs (as well as one impressive sequence, played completely straight, of Barrymore delivering the sole filmed version of his much-lauded rendition of Hamlet’s best-known soliloquy). It’s not high art, and it loses quite a bit of steam between the end of its first act and its conclusion, but it delivers what’s expected for Kyser fans and a certain kind of Barrymore devotee. For all of the finality of this being Barrymore’s last screen performance, I’m more concerned that I‘ve got only one more Kyser feature film to watch.

  • The Batman (2022)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) I was really not convinced that we needed The Batman, or this specific incarnation of it. The idea of a grittier, darker, more realistic Batman is really not what I thought I wanted – we’ve gone that route with the Nolan films, so why not go wilder this time around? (It’s not for nothing that I think that The Lego Batman Movie is as good as it is.) But as The Batman put its pieces together, I was gradually intrigued, then satisfied by the way it integrated the “Greatest Detective” aspect of Batman’s character (often given short thrift in film adaptations), its overt New Hollywood 1970s influence, and its willingness to give us not quite an origin story but neither a polished superhero yet. It’s got a good sense of realism even in putting forward the ridiculous gallery of Batman villain, and it does spend some time exploring personality facets of what it would take to be The Batman. Even the actors do much better than I expected: Robert Pattinson is surprisingly solid as Wayne/Batman, while Zoe Kravitz is suitably slinky/sexy as Catwoman. Decent actors in supporting roles also help, from an unrecognizable Colin Farrell having more fun than ever as an antagonist, to John Turturro being quite menacing as a gangster. It all amounts to a good contemporary take on the character, one that makes Batman a more modern figure while trying to pay homage to his multiple decades’ worth of backstory. Writer-director Matt Reeves successfully translated his fondness for the character in a film that should convince many skeptics and launch a new trilogy. Where my appreciation for the result reaches its limits is in the over-the-top three hours running time, especially during a third act where the rhythm should accelerate rather than keep going, and going, and going – the extended farewell between Batman and Catwoman being a particularly egregious example. Still, I am a convinced viewer, happy to have been proved wrong in my initial skepticism. Now let’s see the sequels, considering that Reeves has given himself plenty of room in which to manoeuvre Batman’s character development.

  • Jésus de Montréal (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2022) It’s Easter, so all TV channels are unfurling their Jesus-themed films – even the iconoclastic Jésus de Montréal, a semi-reverent modern transposition of the Passion of the Christ in 1989 Montréal, with a heavy dose of metafiction, as the titular Jesus is an actor re-creating a bold new take on the Way of the Cross. Helmed by Denys Arcand (a former Catholic and atheist at the time of the film’s production), it’s a mixture of dark comedy, slick filmmaking and religious/philosophical themes that probably couldn’t exist outside French Canada. (A society that was barely a generation and a half past quasi-theocracy La Grande Noirceur by the time the film was released.)  It starts on a quasi-comic tone, as a clergy member contacts a young gifted actor to put together a new live show of Jesus’ last days on church grounds. There’s an entertaining “Let’s get the band together” first act, as members of the ensemble cast are brought together to create the show. But then the film shifts into more serious territory when the show proves too intense for stars and spectators alike – leading to outbursts of Christlike righteous rage from the protagonist, and the clergy shutting down the show. Then it’s off, inevitably, to tragedy, as the stations of the cross are re-created in late-1980s Montréal. It’s a provocative film, but not a disrespectful one – like many Catholic-atheists (counting myself among them), Arcand has a respectful but not deferential attitude toward the church and, more importantly, the teachings it champions: the film works because it’s not a satire, a parody or an angry takedown. Some of the themes get muddled late toward the film; some characters are given short thrift and some points are made as effectively as they could. But for fans of Arcand’s cerebral-but-accessible work, Jésus de Montréal ranks as a decent entry in his filmography – interesting to watch, and not quite as meaningless as it could have been.

  • The Mangler 2 (2002)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) Some movies come with a reputation, and there’s scarcely a mention of The Mangler 2 that doesn’t specify that it’s a terrible, terrible film. This capsule review will be no exception: It really is wretched. A follow-up in name only to a film loosely based on a Stephen King short story, this “sequel” adapts the concept of evil industrial equipment to the twenty-first century, with a school installing a “military-grade” security system and a rebellious student corrupting the system with a magical virus. Or something. Once it gets going, The Mangler 2 is nothing more than a high-tech haunted house story with a few students trying to avoid being slaughtered by a berserk AI once it gets through the expendable adults in the place. If this plot summary has you intrigued, slow down: the execution is much worse than you can imagine, with wholly unconvincing sequences undermining any build-up of suspense. I’m not saying it doesn’t have a few weird odds and ends in the corners of the frame (including a separatist French-Canadian janitor with fleur-de-lys and anti-Canadian stickers decorating his workplace – the film is a Canadian production) but it’s all far less than the sum of its parts. Heck, even the sight of Daniella Evangelista running around in a bikini for much of the third act doesn’t do much – the film is beyond saving by that point, and even when it stumbles upon a halfway effective idea or visual (such as humans being wired into the AI to act as drones), it can’t really do anything with it. Wretched in the way only direct-to-DVD horror sequels can be, The Mangler 2 lives up to reputation… even if it’s not a particularly positive one.

  • Night Raiders (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) This isn’t a fun review to write. Canadian film reviewers have their marching orders: First Nations films are to be lauded. First Nations films taking aim at past trauma inflicted by the colonizers are terrific. And First Nation Science-Fiction movies using extrapolation to confront those issues? Can’t think of a better thing! But despite our best intentions, the movies themselves have to work… and Night Raiders doesn’t. Lazily propping up a drone-fuelled dystopian future in which our brave protagonists (mostly First Nations) are chased, pursued, oppressed, killed, tortured, demeaned and disrespected by totalitarian oppressors (mostly Caucasian), it’s a film that scarcely goes beyond blunt-force obviousness. There’s something very cool about a Canadian/New Zealand co-production exploring matters of systemic oppression and setting it into a dystopian future, but I expected more than the same contrived clichés half-heartedly executed. It’s not as if the film doesn’t have its assets – I quite liked Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Brooklyn Letexier-Hart in the lead roles, and writer-director Danis Goulet occasionally gets a great moment or two – by the time the film works itself to a climax in which drones are manipulated like birds, there’s a fusion of themes, symbolism and science-fiction devices that should have been the bare minimum for such a film. Alas, the way getting there is long, repetitive and often obnoxious in its lack of nuance. Good people are good people because of their ethnicity, and evil white people could not possibly be worse if they tried. In many ways, Night Raiders seems to be muttering to itself in YA tropes and in doing so doesn’t do the work required to reach anyone who’s not already sympathetic to its goals. It’s even more frustrating considering that, in some ways, it gets halfway to its destination – but the missing half is significant enough to limit the film’s effectiveness, even for those reviewers who would like nothing more than to give it a recommendation.

  • The Outside Story (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) It’s almost amazing to realize that The Outside Story was not shot during the early months of the pandemic, given that it’s addressing self-isolation, community and stepping outside after a protracted period of being focused inward. Brian Tyree Henry plays an extremely introvert freelance video editor (working for TCM, no less – although fans of the channel will tell you that the channel reacts in weeks if not months to celebrity deaths, taking away one of the film’s dramatic drivers) who accidentally locks himself outside his Brooklyn apartment/fortress and has to rediscover the neighbourhood around him, and the neighbours willing to help him get through his recent breakup and insecurities. The Outside Story is all decidedly low-stake stuff – the action doesn’t venture very far by design, the issues remain very personal and the same cast of characters keeps revolving around the protagonist. But it’s clever, likable and even poignant at times. Henry does well as the protagonist, while Sonequa Martin-Green looks terrific, and I’m increasingly taken with Sunita Mani every time I see her on-screen. I don’t think it’s perfect – elements of the romantic climax had me gritting my teeth – but it’s a happy discovery. The Outside Story is the kind of unspectacular, low-profile film that doesn’t look like much on paper, but eventually develops into something quite successful and effective in its own way. It also happens to carry a message that we need to hear in this bleary dawn of 2022, where we’re not quite sure to relate to the people around us after being told to isolate ourselves for so long.

  • Moonshot (2022)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) It took me a much longer time than I expected (or is ideal) to warm up to Moonshot, but I eventually came around. It doesn’t start all that promisingly with an atonal blend of young adult fiction tropes, comedy, romance and science fiction. Our protagonist is a lovelorn loser who’s apparently not too good at school, dismal in romance and repeatedly rejected by the budding Mars colony. (The film takes place against a vaguely dystopian but never questioned set-up where a wacky billionaire has control over Martian colonization –could that ever happen?)  After a laborious set-up, the film and his life finally kick into high gear as he encounters an attractive girl leaving for Mars, gets into an argument with another girl rich enough to pay her way over there and incompetently smuggles himself onboard the latest flight to Mars. (There’s apparently a monopoly on Mars travel or something. Also, artificial gravity. I’m not sure which one is least plausible.)  A good chunk of Moonshot is spent aboard that multi-month trip from Earth to Mars: As the predictable engines of romance get going, our protagonist gets closer to the girl he disliked and bluffs his way through the flight in impersonating someone else rather than spend the trip hiding in air ducts. Much of Moonshot is off kilter – amusingly so, but sometimes in ways that are enough to make anyone wish the script had been more finely tuned. Still, it eventually grows on everyone. Cole Sprouse eventually makes his character work, awkwardness and all, but it’s Lana Condor who becomes the film’s biggest asset, with Michelle Buteau getting to steal a few great scenes. The special effects are quite good for a straight-to-HBO release, and the Science Fiction elements generally work in ways that didn’t in the similar film The Space Between Us. Director Chris Winterbauer has a few good moments up his sleeve, and despite a few sputters here and there, Moonshot eventually brings together the elements for a winning formula. Cute, sweet, not too stupid and generally likable: it may not be an all-time classic, but it eventually becomes watchable enough.

  • Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) I don’t often criticize a film’s set design, but then again Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold isn’t your usual film. It’s much, much worse than most of them. Even offered as a tongue-in-cheek take on the kinds of adventure films made red-hot in the 1980s by the success of the first two Indiana Jones films, this second Richard Chamberlain-as-Quatermain film is terrible no matter how you look at it. So terrible that some canyon action sequences are clearly shot in the studio with obvious flooring barely covered by dirt, taking away any tense of tension that it could have. So terrible that even the comedy falls down with a thud, looking more puzzling than amusing. So terrible that the dialogue is trash, the plot developments painful and even Cassandra Peterson can’t save the film’s last half. So terrible that you can’t even appreciate a young Sharon Stone as the female lead. So terrible that… well, you get it by now. It’s clear that the film aims far higher than what it can deliver on its budget and special effects: the “thrilling” adventure through the African landscape to reach a mysterious city feels like a cut-rate amusement park ride. The progressiveness of the 1980s compared to earlier repulsive takes on the Quatermain character isn’t obvious at all considering James Earl Jones’ role as a tribal warrior. Chamberlain escapes mockery, but not by much – after all, he’s stuck with the same terrible dialogue as everyone else, and has to react to the same unconvincing papier-maché threats. Indifferently conceived and ineptly executed, Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold is perhaps best watched as a convincing argument about the skill required to make a decent adventure film: pulp-fiction tropes aren’t nearly enough to satisfy.

  • To the Devil a Daughter (1976)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) As far as Satanist movies go, To the Devil a Daughter is mediocre fare – playing with familiar elements with an intriguing cast, but not going any further and feeling incongruous when it does finally take it to a gorier level. Known as the last of the “original” run of Hammer Studio films, it features studio mascot Christopher Lee as an evil excommunicated priest with dark designs on a teenager raised to be part of occult rites. Lee is formidable enough, but the film also features Richard Widmark (add this one to the filmography of Classic Hollywood stars slumming it in 1970s horror films) as a heroic writer/protagonist, and Nastassja Kinski young enough to make her nude scenes reprehensible and perhaps more horrifying than the rest of the film put together. Much of To the Devil a Daughter progresses at a very tepid pace, with endless exposition keeping the film from going where it wants to go. By the time the noticeably gorier and more upsetting climax rolls around, it’s too late to save the film – it just feels atonal, misguided and exploitative. You can watch it for Lee, but he has done better in many other films.

  • The Seven-Ups (1973)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) Digging through Hollywood history, it’s sometimes fascinating to uncover films that were clearly meant to be follow-ups to far more famous titles, but failed to achieve any notoriety on their own. Yes, I’m talking about sequels that nobody saw but also thematic follow-ups, such as The Seven-Ups, a film clearly meant to be another attempt to capture the magic of The French Connection. The primary link to the previous film is obvious, with Roy Scheider playing a character named “Buddy” in both movies (even if they’re not meant to be the exact same character), but they extend well into the credits with numerous crewmembers and above-the-line crew. Same producer, screenwriter, composer and stunt coordinator, for instance. Same intention to present a gritty universe of evil criminals and unorthodox cops. The same general idea for an extended stunt sequence as the highlight of the film. While The Seven-Ups certainly isn’t as well known as The French Connection, it does have its moments. Some of the suspense and action set-pieces have aged relatively well for a 1970s film, and Scheider was a top actor for a reason – his ability to keep us engaged is clear here, even as we’re asked to consider a group of crooked cops as the heroes. Still, if you’re looking for a reason to watch the film, there’s no debate: The car chase sequence that starts in a parking garage and proceeds furiously to the outskirts of New York City is the slam-bang sequence that justifies the film. It starts slowly, but the truck-smashing climax is as abrupt as it’s spectacular – and try not to notice that it doesn’t narratively advance the film for something like twenty minutes. The rest is a more brightly-lit-than-usual 1970s cop thriller: Unpleasant, cold, harsh and glum, but more engaging than many similar films and not unpleasant to watch either. Still, the point of the film was the car chase, and that’s well-worth watching at least once – especially if you had no idea The French Connection led directly to The Seven-Ups.