We also learned what “The French Connection” works in the legendary action crime crime novel by William Friedkin in 1971 with Gene Hackman in the lead role. according to actual events. The French connection was actually a scheme that started back in the 1930s when heroin was delivered to Marseilles via Indochina and Turkey and then flowed further towards America. For decades, most heroin came to America via Marseille, and the operation was led by Corsican criminals with good connections in politics, police and the judiciary, as is customary.
“La French” or “The Connection” takes us through the period from the mid-1970s when this connection was at its peak to the early 1980s when the main smuggling organization was destroyed. The organization is led by cold-blooded assassin Gaetan Tany Zampa (Gilles Lellouche) who is untouchable in the Marseille crime scene and the mechanism he organized works perfectly. But when young investigating judge Pierre Michel (Jean Dujardin) is given the task of taking over a unit fighting organized crime, he will take the task more than seriously. Although everyone before him has argued that it is impossible to prove and link Zampin’s gang to heroin smuggling, Michel will do his best to prove that this is not the case.
It will slowly start a real showdown with organized crime and it will slowly start to tighten the noose around Zampa, but of course it will not go so fast and so easily. Michel is one of those investigators on the trail of Eliot Ness, the cop who eventually arrested Al Capone, and exactly what Capone was to Ness, to Michel will be Zampa. While “La French” doesn’t really bring anything new or particularly fresh to the genre and Jimenez made this film in the wake of similar American films that also dealt with the subject of criminal underworld and mafia organizations, it’s a film of incredible dynamics and persuasiveness. The cast is impressive and both Lellouche and Dujardin are excellent in their roles, and the largest French port city, Marseille, in the second half of the 1970s, is also brilliantly portrayed. Rating 8.5 / 10.
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